Emmeline Pankhurst

My father and I rarely saw eye to eye when I was growing up. We saw the world differently. It was only when we were both adults that we were able to share spectacles. However, football, and particularly the World Cup, was when we, enemy combatants, could traverse trenches and be together.

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.