Twofifty words for Monday. Words about the process of writing and learning about that process. Responding to questions: who, what, where, when, how? Of course, the first one has to be 'why?'.

Why write at all, and why Science Fiction?

Many authors will tell you that they have always written. That their childhoods were furnished with notebooks crammed with tales of imagined characters and far-away lands. Their first short stories were published before they had pubic hair. They had hand-printed magazines and organised literary societies at school or college. They had been journalists or copywriters or written furiously while holding down steady jobs and rearing hoards of offspring. They were entranced by the written word.

I am not that kind of writer. My childhood was filled with fantasies about the future. My fascination is not with words, it is with ideas. I have, since before I could read, held a firm belief that the future will be better than the present and that it will be better because of better technology, more intelligent systems and ubiquitous access to cheap facilities. And space of course. Access to space (the interstellar kind, not the stuff we store our crap in) is of paramount importance to our species. This planet is only a stepping stone and we all know it. If humanity is to survive, and that is a contentious point, then our future is unquestionably in space. And you don't have to be a rocket scientist to work that out.