With his works consistently nominated for "Best Book" honors on subjects ranging from the occult to the scientific study of chaos, William Sleator has become a popular sci-fi author for young-adults. "Everybody in my family is a scientist except me. I always liked science but was never good enough to be a real scientist; I was the dumbest person in the advanced class. Still, I learned a lot. I prefer science fiction that has some basis in reality: psychological stories, time-travel stories, but especially stories about people. My book Singularity is about several things--including the idea of time speeding up or slowing down in relation to gravity--but it's also about the relationship between two brothers. My best books have a physical reality.

"What I don't like are space operas which are violent war stories that take place with spacemen in rocket ships instead of gunslingers on horses."

Sleator...