So I wrote Marriages [Between Zones Three, Four and Five], which I personally think is one of my best books, and it... it's also got a life of its own. It then became a... opera with Philip Glass which was done in Germany and then in Chicago, and then nothing has happened – these things go in waves, nothing has happened to this book... this opera, since.

But this particular... it's completely unlike the other books in that series – the series is called... what is it called? It's ridiculous, it's... anyway, it's the Archives... of... Canopus... Canopus in Argos: Archives is the series. And so Marriages fitted into that as if I'd meant to do it, but I hadn't. But what happened was that a key had been turned somewhere in my unconscious or where... my over-conscious, my side-conscious... a key had been turned. Something that had been impossible for me to write for 10 years or more was perfectly easy; I just wrote it... in... just like that, and I adored writing it – which I must say something about that in a minute – I adored writing that book, and I... I still think it's one of my best books.

But why, you see... now we come to the explanation. Why did this happen? Why did this idea of the series set off a total of five books? Why did it? I don't know. We don't know about a lot of things. We don't know what goes on inside us, you know. That is the point, and we should remember it because it's all a great mystery, really... which brings me, at a somewhat surprising leap, to The Good Terrorist.