John Niven

I love Twitter, and my little corner of it is heavily weighted in favour of women, many of them writers: Caitlin Moran, India Knight, Lauren Laverne, Grace Dent, Deborah Orr, Marina Hyde, Suzanne Moore. I look at that list of names and think, 'Here comes the fun - fun that knows its way around a dictionary.'

If you put a frog in boiling water, it'll jump straight out. If you put it in cold water and gradually bring it to the boil, it'll sit right there until it dies. Scotland has been sitting in England's gradually boiling water for so long that many people are used to it.

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.