Madeleine M. Kunin

To make flexibility work, it is not only necessary to change our attitude about who is a good worker and who is not, but we have to train managers at all levels to recognize the difference between the number of hours worked and the quality of work produced.

Any smart executive understands that to find the best talent she has to explore new territory that lies beyond familiar geography. That applies not only to gender, but also to race, religion, background and age.

I talked to a lot of employers who just are, are fearful of what's coming next out of Washington. It's all the spending, it's all the debt. It's their national energy tax, they want to call it cap and trade - more mandates, higher costs, more taxes. Their healthcare bill - more mandates, higher costs, higher taxes.

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.