Leonardo DiCaprio

All the great Shakespeare plays are about killing. 'Alas, poor Yorick,' that's about death. And in 'Romeo and Juliet' everyone up ends up dying. The greatest dramas in the world are all about sex, violence and death.

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.