Mamie Gummer

I play-acted and started performing, which just logically led to doing it in school, which led to studying it in college, which led to auditioning to the showcase in New York. And then I had an agent, and I was an actress.

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.