I was a novelist before I was a TV screenwriter. Actually, as a kid, I think I'd always wanted to be a writer, but never thought that I would be one.

I had been reading a lot about pioneers in Australia and the colonization of Australia, and pioneers in Virginia and the early settlers in the United States, and I was fascinated by those communities and how they grew, how their politics developed, and the actual suffering of those people and the tribulations they went through.

The best content is the means, not the end.

Sci-fi is very much an American genre. Space and the exploration of space is something so closely associated with America.

I'm not from a particularly sci-fi background. I'm not anti sci-fi at all, but I've never been known as a sci-fi writer and, suddenly, I was creating a flagship BBC sci-fi show, which is terrifying sometimes.

The stronger a brand’s point of view, the greater its voltage.

I wrote about the life of a housing officer in Britain, in a pretty rough area of London. Maybe it was because I'm a big-mouth and an exhibitionist, and I'm slightly egotistical. All those things have to come together for a writer.

I'm not into politics. I'm into survival.