David L. Wolper

I couldn't get my first film on the air. The first film I did was called 'The Race For Space,' about the U.S.-Soviet space race. The networks had a policy that I found out about the hard way. I even had a sponsor for my program, but the networks wouldn't put it on because it was independently produced.

When a place comes across vividly in a novel, it's often compared to a character. I can remember writing teachers who encouraged me to treat setting as if it were a character, to give it three dimensions, to make it come alive, jump off the page.

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.