John Mahoney

I'm a dog person, I've had dogs all my life. But you see, it's not really a dog. It's more like a little robot. It's an actor. It displays no emotion whatsoever. I swear that dog doesn't know any of us even though we've done five seasons of Frasier.

In a Harvard University study, the diets of nearly 1,000 women were analysed before their morning melatonin levels were measured. Meat consumption was the only food significantly associated with lower melatonin production, for reasons that are as yet unknown.

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.