Lance Burton

I feel like I'm the luckiest person alive. I'm always waiting for that phone call: 'Hello. We've just realized you're really a no-talent hillbilly. We've made a horrible mistake and we'd like you to leave now.'

It was a great opportunity that I had to take - my very own theater. That comes along once in a lifetime. It doesn't even seem like 15 years ago - time sure flies by. I've really had a lot of fun with it.

The dove act? I'm still working on it. I don't think it's perfect yet. I got my first pair of doves when I was 14 years old. That was the beginning of the formation of that act. So it's been 24 years now that I've been working on it.

I haven't gotten jobs because I'm famous or I have a big Twitter feed - it's primarily directors. People employ me because I'm right for the part. But then, everybody needs a bit of luck, being in the right place at the right time. You just gotta be in that place for that opportunity to come by.

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.

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.