We're as clever as we think we are but we'll be a lot cleverer when we learn to use not just one brain but to pool huge numbers of brains. We're at a level technologically where we can share information and think collectively about our problems. We do it in science all the time - there's no reason why we can't do it in other endeavors.

Much of today's public anxiety about science is the apprehension that we may forever be overlooking the whole by an endless obsessive preoccupation with the parts.

Science will explain how but not why. It talks about what is not what ought to be. Science is descriptive not prescriptive it can tell us about causes but it cannot tell us about purposes. Indeed science disavows purposes.

Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster which is one of the oldest subjects of art.

What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: 'Crumbs have I made a mistake here?' If you don't have that continuously you really are up the creek. The good sceptics have done a good service but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours.

If you start any large theory such as quantum mechanics plate tectonics evolution it takes about 40 years for mainstream science to come around. Gaia has been going for only 30 years or so.

I started out writing much more science fictiony stuff and writing about science fiction.

Mythology and science both extend the scope of human beings. Like science and technology mythology as we shall see is not about opting out of this world but about enabling us to live more intensely within it.

The most watched programme on the BBC after the news is probably 'Doctor Who.' What has happened is that science fiction has been subsumed into modern literature. There are grandparents out there who speak Klingon who are quite capable of holding down a job. No one would think twice now about a parallel universe.

It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.