"Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard and astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan explore the connections between science and Buddhist philosophy. Taking a scientific and secular approach, the authors explain the Buddhist theory of emptiness: the concept that all beings and events are relational and interconnected and therefore have no separate, absolute reality in space and time. I keep this book on my desk and go back to it often for clarity and inspiration."

"Version Control is perhaps the strangest fictional work of appropriated voices and subjects. It’s set in a surreal near future — or several near futures — as well as in several pasts. Though issues of race play virtually no role in the stories, one character, an African-American physicist, recalls dropping out of a writing course because the professor thought he should be mining his heritage instead of inventing science fiction."

"I like Franklin’s biography by Isaacson, it’s really good. He was an entrepreneur, he started of nothing, just like a runaway kid. It was interesting to see how he is creating his business, then go to science and politics. I could say he is one of the people I most admire. Franklin is pretty awesome. He did what needed to be done at the time it needed to be done."

"And my all-time favorite number one science fiction movie would be…Starship Troopers! Because I’m vain! And full of myself! No, actually I’m excluding me from this, but I would put that on the list. But I can’t do myself, because it just isn’t right. I would say Aliens. Because, as Jim Cameron himself said, “Why are they making Starship Troopers? I already did!” He was wrong, by the way!"

"Here we are. Top of the heap. 8 billion people crawling on every piece of earth available. Early humans learned that through cooperation they could, say, travel off our planet and walk on the moon. The question now is, can we survive another millennia? With all of our technology, science, medicine, an ever exploding population, and an unending appetite for a finite amount of earthly resources, will we survive much longer?"

"“In 1987, Thurston and I were both reading Philip K. Dick, whose writing has more in common with philosophy than science fiction, and whose descriptions of schizophrenia were better than those of any medical journal. Philip Dick had a twin sister who died shortly after she was born and whose memory plagued him his whole life—which is maybe how and why our new album ended up being called Sister."

"I have favorite chick flicks and favorite comedies. My taste goes to romantic comedy a lot. Somewhere in Time, with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour — stop already! That was one of the most romantic stories I’d ever seen in my life; I was in tears, but it also involved a little bit of science fiction, with the time travel element. That one really moved me back in 1980."