Gray Scott

You have to talk about 'The Terminator' if you're talking about artificial intelligence. I actually think that that's way off. I don't think that an artificially intelligent system that has superhuman intelligence will be violent. I do think that it will disrupt our culture.

The 'Star Trek' future, to me, is where we are headed. Everything is automated, and we are free to pursue our dreams. We are free to pursue lives that aren't about working and toiling away in dangerous jobs. For example, how many of us would love to be poets, or how many of us would love to be artists?

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.