I’ve been interested in fiction in the developing world for quite some time. I live just outside Belfast, in Northern Ireland. It’s one of those places that’s kind of on the periphery of things. In many ways, it’s one of the least science fictional places in the world to grow up in. In another sense, it’s the perfect preparation for life in the twenty-first century—living through thirty years of civil, religious, and political violence is fairly good prep for the way I feel the twenty-first century is going to go.

I’ve got two stories that will both totally eclipse “Guts” in the public mind, but I’m not saying anything about them. I’m not going to spoil that thunder until the stories are ready.

When I got a little older I studied computer science, and during an undergraduate degree in computer science the first thing I discovered was genetic algorithms, and then on a larger scale I found out about artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The notion of working the boundary line between a real currency and a virtual currency is inherently interesting to me.

I find serious martial arts students don’t read adventure fantasy, and serious readers of fantasy don’t bother to work out the moves in their heads. Bummer!

It’s almost as though the American electorate is splitting into two species, with the civilized, educated ones on one hand and the total ignorant know-nothings on the other.

For me the book is not so much about actually existing linguistics necessarily so much as it is to do with a certain kind of more abstract kind of philosophy of language of symbols, and of semiotics, and indeed some of this crosses over into theological debates.

Lois McMaster Bujold is running out of things to win. She’s won the Hugo Award for best novel many times over. She’s won the Nebula Award twice, the Mythopoeic Award for adult novel, and three Locus Awards.

I really like the idea of writing myself as this incredibly self-involved bombastic superhero with a robot butler in the most florid prose possible because it’s just enormous fun to be bad on purpose.

What does it mean to be human in a large and frightening and beautiful universe? That’s an immense question, and there are many kinds of answers.