In some sense, gravity does not exist; what moves the planets and the stars is the distortion of space and time.
Indeed, we are privileged to have been afforded the opportunity to study Nature and to follow our own thoughts and inspirations in a time of relative tranquillity and in a land with a generous and forward-looking government.
Humor is rare in science fiction... there's so little of it that it automatically reminds you of other heroes with that acerbic humor when you find it.
Sci-fi films are the epic films of the day because we can no longer put 10,000 extras in the scene - but we can draw thousands of aliens with computers.
Being a native of Spain, the country to which I owe much of my education and cultural background, I was deeply influenced by my great predecessor Santiago Ramon y Cajal.
Biology will relate every human gene to the genes of other animals and bacteria, to this great chain of being.
Early on, it's good to develop the ability to write. Learning to write is a useful exercise, even if what you're writing about is not that relevant.
I just sit down and the page just comes out and I look at it and the elements that appear on that page have a lot to do with what's going on in my life.
In microbiology the roles of mutation and selection in evolution are coming to be better understood through the use of bacterial cultures of mutant strains.
We are seeing the cells of plants and animals more and more clearly as chemical factories, where the various products are manufactured in separate workshops.
I thought I would reflect here on a theme most scientists enjoy recalling: the part luck played in their accomplishments.
I started taking a basic biology course, and I really loved it. I started asking research questions incessantly. I was drawn very quickly to biology.
This time at Birmingham turned me into a general biologist, and ever since then I have always tried to take a biological approach to any research project that I have undertaken.
The romantic appeal of solar sailing has ensured that its advocates consistently come from the worlds of both science fiction and science fact.
It was generally believed that Catholics were not interested in arts and science graduate schools. They weren't going to be intellectuals. And so I put the theses to the test. And they all collapsed.
Science fiction has always had a dark side. There has been a touch of the irrational and absurd in the genre from the very beginning.
In the forensic science course I took at university they used photographs of dead bodies. For ballistics they showed us a guy lying on the floor, and his head had burst.
My training in Science of Mind had begun with my mother. She took me to a different church every Sunday, and she encouraged me to question the minister afterward.
One of the many things that surprised me about 'Wool' is how many of its fans don't consider themselves science fiction readers.
It was a shock to people of the nineteenth century when they discovered, from observations science had made, that many features of the biological world could be ascribed to the elegant principle of natural selection.
I believe that science is the engine of prosperity, that if you look around at the wealth of civilization today, it's the wealth that comes from science.
