Clive Anderson

If you are a rich person straining every sinew to keep every last pound in your pocket, there comes a point when you realize you are not just escaping the clutches of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. You are passing a greater burden on to people poorer than yourself, and depriving even poorer people of your support.

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.