Lisa Marie Presley

I think having kids just makes you want to do things to help people. You have children, and you see how fragile and innocent and helpless they are when they first start out. If they are going to be a victim of whatever they are surrounded by, I just do everything I can to try to make whatever change I can.

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.