Tell me about Futurama.
It's about a pizza delivery boy named Fry who, on New Year's Eve 1999, gets inadvertently frozen in a cryogenics lab and wakes up 1,000 years later. The themes: If you are a loser, is it possible to reinvent yourself? How do you deal with the desire for youth, for the return of dead loved ones, and what does it mean to be finite in the universe? Boy, is this too pretentious or what?

Why 1,000 years, instead of 100 or 500?
We have upped the ante for anybody who does the future - ours takes place after yours. It also gives us an opportunity to justify any gadget we want.

Like what?
Faster-than-light travel - which right now we are calling the "convenience drive."

How did you decide to do science fiction?
As a kid I saw the 1956 movie version of "1984" on TV. I kept watching this horrible Big Brother dystopia and waiting for the space patrol to rescue everybody. But the space patrol never came! I realized then, as disturbing as it was, that there were really fun possibilities in science fiction.

So [are] the smart guys corporations?
Our big earthly villain is Mom. Mom runs Mom-Corp. She is this very scrawny elderly woman who wears a fat suit to make her look more lovable and she is beloved all accross the world. She is very rich from manufacturing Mom's Old-Fashioned Robot Oil.

One of the lead characters, Bender, seems like a recurring type, the neurotic robot.
He is beyond neurotic. He is totally corrupt. He shoplifts. He thrives on the things that harm humans. He actually gets energy from smoking cigars and drinking beer. Bender also gets us around censor problems - he can't be a bad role model for kids, because he is just a robot.

What becomes of The Simpsons?
The Simpsons are still on the air in the year 3000. Many of our favorite celebrities are still around - they are just disembodied heads in jars. In the very first episode, our hero Fry hides out in a head museum where he stumbles upon Lenard Nimoy's head in a jar. So he holds up his fingers and says, "Hey, Spock, do the thing!" And Nimoy's head says, "I don't do that anymore."

Is Microsoft still dominant in 3000?
Nope, out of business. All gone. Intel gone. Pepsi gone. By the way, if a sponsor wants to pay us enough money they can still be around.

Is there still school in the year 3000?
Oh yes. But there are also jet packs.

And the internet?
Yes, and it is still too slow.

You sometimes hide things in the frames on The Simpsons. Same for Futurama?
We have what we call freeze-frame moments - there are a series of alien alphabets you can find, and we'll also provide the keys to figure them out. We'll see what the cryptographers out there can do.

[Any other interesting tidbits about the show]?
In Futurama, they are able to test you and find out what you would be best at in life. If you take a test at age three, they will find out that, yes, you should be a doctor or a delivery boy or whatever. They are accurate. But that doesn't neccessarily coincide with what is in your heart. Out main characters - Bender and fry and the others - are all outcasts who want to go against their programming, whether or not they will be siccessful. For instance, Bender, whose whole name is Bender Unit 22, because he is programmed to bend girders, really wants to be a cook. That is his goal in life. But he doesn't have taste buds. So it is absurd. Yet I think that is the secret - doing what you want rather than what you are told.