'Kraken' is set in London and has a lot of London riffs, but I think it's more like slightly dreamlike, slightly abstract London. It's London as a kind of fantasy kingdom.

My parents went through the dictionary looking for a beautiful name, nearly called me Banyan, flicked on a few pages and came to China, which is cockney rhyming slang for mate.

Well I don't feel sectarian against sparseness, although I sometimes get a little chippy about this. I resent the way that a certain notion of parsimony has become the norm for skilful literary writing.

Ever since I was two, I've loved octopuses, monsters, abandoned buildings.

Fantastic fiction covers fantasy, horror and science fiction - and it doesn't get the attention it deserves from the literati.

I don't like allegory.

I like the idea of trying to write a book in every genre.

I love it when people want to interpret my books.

I love monsters.

I remember vividly what it's like to read as a 10-year-old - that passionate inhabiting of a book.

I think science fiction is very bad at prediction.

I'd never been to a science-fiction convention until I became a professional writer.

I'm a science fiction and fantasy geek.

I'm a very friendly socialist.

In every book I write, I try to name-check the most prominent influences, or the most prominent conscious influences.

Personally I don't like it when writers become excessively proscriptive about the way that people read their books.

There's plenty of stuff that I don't feel dissident about: I really like tea, I don't have any problem with that. I like lots of paintings.

A lot of geeks are pale, bespectacled, wear dark clothing and don't get out much - the stereotype exists because it is very often true. I could pass for a non-geek but it would be inaccurate.

But I do think it's important to remember that writers do not have a monopoly of wisdom on their books. They can be wrong about their own books, they can often learn about their own books.

Every book I write, the first thing I have to do is get into the voice, and the voice varies from book to book - that's part of what's interesting to me.