Ivan Glasenberg

When we first invested in Colombia, we were buying a lot of coal from Colombia. We were dealing with them daily. I knew their guys at the port, I knew their guys at the mine, I had a feel of the country.

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.

I doubt very much that the chief executives of any of the Fortune 500 corporations can name five edible plants, five native grasses, or five migratory birds within walking distance of their homes, or name the soil series upon which their house sits. And I would contend that if you don't know where you are, you are in fact nowhere at all.