It’s a simple article, kinda dumb itself, but it yields up a couple of gems, like this, about writing characters he disagrees with:

One of the few truly unlikable characters in [Forty Signs Of Rain] is the science adviser to the president; Robinson’s task, and it’s not an easy one, is to make readers understand how he thinks, why he believes what he does.

“People like that are often connected with very conservative think tanks,” he said. “If you can articulate a position defending the status quo, you can make a damn good living. . . . They convince themselves.

“They see themselves in a rebel role — ‘I’m such a skeptic.’ They also get hung up on the ‘purity’ of science: Unless you can reproduce something in the laboratory, they reject it. But anyone so concerned with purity — well, it’s amazingly revealing of insecurity.”