This is science fiction. As far as we know, it is not only not true, but probably impossible. Most SF ideas fall into this category. It’s simply a cool idea, and who knows?

Tempted women. An ultimate (forbidden?) knowledge. The scent and taste of an apple. The fear that it may have all happened before, and been Science Fiction back then too.

Rural isolation lends itself to clandestine activities; so does Nevada’s laissez-faire brand of rugged individualism. Were I writing the story now, I’d have to explain why Welly’s selling pot instead of meth.

The reason I am not depressed when I look around and see only selfish behavior. I don’t want to hurt you or anyone else because it would hurt me to do so. I think it’s better than altruism.

Some of the more intelligent speculations about their silence are in the story, shortly before the Sayings of the Elder: that they don’t speak because they are listening; because they are hiding something.

This society has eradicated illness, and most people, of course, see that as a good thing. But the more you fix things, the more you have to watch to make sure they don’t start falling apart again.

I became a history major just after Vietnam to understand why humans went to war in the first place. I never really did figure that out, but it led to a lifelong obsession.

Where is the sacrifice in a martyr who believes he’ll live eternally in paradise? I was trying to think about the idea of true martyrdom—the sacrifice of not just your life, but of the hope for an afterlife.

Halfway through writing “Ej-es,” I emailed Janis Ian to tell her that I had turned her ballad of love and longing into a story about a retro-virus in the brain. She emailed back, “How did you know?”

I wanted the structure of the story to mimic the time-jumps that Hwang endures over and over again, in order to evoke at least a ghost of that instability, that sense of unease. I also had some ideas that I wasn’t sure how to make use of individually.