Oh, of course! Hugely. I mean, fiction allows you to imagine. If you didn’t have science fiction, how could you possibly stretch the edges of your understanding and your expectations to where they have to be in order to do the things that I’ve done? As a kid I read Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Arthur C. Clarke, and Asimov, I read all of those. But there’s also not just written science fiction, but of course Star Trek, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the book and then also the movie, all of those. They basically—it was like slamming and then permanently locking a whole bunch of doors open. Then it was more whether you wanted to try and push yourself mentally through them, and then see if maybe that’s something we can do physically.

And when you ask about a direct, concrete thing—there’s a thing called the Clarke orbit that Arthur C. Clarke invented and it’s named for him. So when you’re studying orbital mechanics, it’s all science fact and fairly complex and mathematical stuff, but you don’t get to be a good science fiction author without research and without the understanding of the reality of what underpins a lot of the things you write about. And Clarke was more rigorous than most. I got to spend a day with him once at the Kennedy Space Center too, it was terrific. I was Arthur C. Clarke’s tour guide for a day, [at the place] where I left Earth twice on two different space shuttles. So a lovely blending of science fiction and science fact. And he was intensely curious and knowledgeable and delighted and delightful. So yeah, science fiction has been both impactful and hugely inspiring in all of the various things that I’ve done.

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