Liz Phair

That's what music is to me. Like, stuff that I really like to play loud. And I've got my quiet CDs, too, that I listen to around the house, but if you can't go there, then... Everyone gets so upset with me, I can't win.

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.