James A. Baldwin

I like to be busy. I once shared an agent with the late Sir John Gielgud, who, at 96, was apparently still ringing up, saying, 'Hello, Gielgud here, any work?' Good on him. We've got to keep working. If we retire, there'll be nobody to play the old wrinklies, and that would be a dreadful shame.

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.