''The [forthcoming] 'Ea Cycle' is a grail quest. It's set in a secondary world which is also a secondary universe, something I haven't seen too much in fantasy, though it's like Moorcock's 'Multiverse,' tying his work together. My fantasy is probably more like a traditional science fictional structure, in that there's a secondary world, and there are other magical secondary worlds around other stars, in much the same way a science fiction universe would be set up. And the kinds of world-building I'm doing are more along SF lines. All those hard SF things I did to build the universe and world of 'Neverness,' and even some of the research there, have really helped me out.

''There's an angelic race, then an archangelic race, and a race that's higher than they are. And there's this great galactic civilization. It's not a technological one; it's a magical civilization, but the magic is not 'wizard and elves'; it's more like 'deep structure of the universe.' Built into that structure is the idea that there's an evolutionary progression from lower beings to star people, to immortal beings that would be like angels (though I don't call them angels), to archangels, to kind of an increate race that imbues its life force, its consciousness, into creating universes – of which my universe is one. So there are some very deep structures and a sense of hugeness. And that is something you find throughout Tolkien.''

[....] so, very much like George R R Martin in the latter's A Song of Fire & Ice series, he does not write simply far more stylishly and interestingly than do his competitors; he innovates. In three ways: he writes Science Fantasy while studiously avoiding any acknowledgement of so doing; he draws in to the quest formula Asian ideas and codes of storytelling; and he garnishes his tale with a striking poetry of the spirit, a system of luminous metaphors that endow his text with a weight of meanng that matches its weight in pages [....]