"I wanted to write about the next 5 minutes, not the last 30 years. The only form of fiction that had the vocabulary of ideas to deal with the next 5 minutes was science fiction. I wanted a science fiction for the present day. It seemed to me that the future was a better key to the present than the past."

"What is so strange about the world we inhabit today is the way in which fiction and reality have become reversed. 20, 30, 40 years ago everybody had a clear idea that reality was the external world around you, the world of work, industry and commerce. Fantasy and the imagination was the world inside our head, the private dreams and hopes for the future. Now that's been reversed. Now the external landscapes of our world are almost entirely fictional, made up of advertising and publicity - an artificial man-made landscape. The only point of reality we each of us have is inside our heads. Our own obsessions are all we have."