Brian Herbert

My wife noticed that I wrote really good complaint letters about faulty products and that I could get anything I wanted out of these big corporations, and she said that I was a good writer and that I should go to my dad and ask him for help.

In 'Sidney's Comet,' thanks to all the consumerism, all the garbage had to be put in deep space, even though we're not supposed to litter the cosmos - that was an environmental message. Although it was funny, it had an important message.

My grandfather was a police officer. He taught Dad about lie detectors and police interrogation methods, so Dad got this old World War II lie detector and used it on us regularly. He was obsessed with the truth.

Sometimes you see films, not just science fiction films, where you get the sense that if the camera were to pan just to the left or the right, all of a sudden you'd be seeing light stands and crew standing around. But with 'Blade Runner,' the beauty of it is that it felt like a real, breathing city.

I do read a lot, and I think in recent years the ratio between the amount of non-fiction and fiction has tipped quite considerably. I did read fiction as a teenager as well, mostly because I was forced to read fiction, of course, to go through high school.