Andy Cohen

I always knew I wanted to be in front of the camera. But even after 10 years behind the scenes at CBS News producing live segments, celebrity profiles, and breaking news, I still hadn't been given the chance to be on TV.

Philately is normally a boys' hobby but for some reason it was in vogue at my junior school. Between the ages of eight and ten I collected avidly. I'd pore over my Stanley Gibbons book, obsessively checking my collection's value. I always hoped I'd stumble across a really valuable one, a Penny Black or an Inverted Jenny, but it wasn't to be.

I've been interested in American politics since I was eight. That was in 1968. It was an interesting year. I was a huge Eugene McCarthy supporter, so I guess he was the first senator I really knew about and cared about.

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.