Robinson wrote his Ph.D. thesis onPhilip K. Dick while at University ofCalifornia in Davis; it was revised and published as a book in1984.

It felt to me that [science fiction] was how to best express whatSouthern California was about. Even though it was in symbolic terms,this sense of rapid change and history spinning out of control. ... Itwas the way Southern California felt. When I was a kid, Orange Countywas orange trees, and I was reading Huckleberry Finn and thinking I wasin Hannibal, Missouri. As a kid, I was pretty wrong about where I wasin time and space. Science fiction was a correction. I saw trees getripped out and replaced by freeways and condominium culture. Sciencefiction helped me understand it. (2004)