Cyrus McCormick

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.

As a kid, I watched 'Bugs Bunny' cartoons, and for some reason Pepe Le Pew, the indomitable French skunk pursuing his would-be kitty paramour, left his mark on me: became an instant emblem of odoriferous hubris, hedonistic bad behavior. He was an entry-level Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a rookie Marquis de Sade.