My degree is in archaeology. It’s remarkably useful for a science fiction writer, because at its heart is the intersection between culture and technology and understanding how one impacts the other…whether the technology is an improved stone knife or a starship.

Working archaeologists are always trying to improve our understanding of how people lived in the past. One of the lines I’ve used is “History is plot, archaeology is character.” History is about what happened. It’s about events, when they happened and why. History is arguing about exactly what caused World War I…the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the proximate cause, but not the only one.

Archaeology is trying to work out how people in Neolithic England made bread.