Lynda Barry

When you learn about stories in school, you get it backward. You start to think 'Oh, the reason these things are in stories is because a book said I need to put these things in there.' You need a death, as my husband says, and you need a little sidekick with a saying like 'Skivel-dee-doo!'

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.