Edith Wharton

It is really no surprise that, in a media world that has been so compromised by an invasion of political partisans and inarticulate airheads with communications degrees, a fake journalist can seem more trustworthy than the real thing.

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.

The popular mythology of creative genius depends on beloved stereotypes of the artist in youth and old age: the misunderstood upstart who forces us to see the world afresh; and the revered sage who shows us depths of insight attainable only through a lifetime of hard-won experience.