Martin O'Malley

The most valuable investment we can make is in our children's education. When we make education a priority, we give our children opportunity. Opportunity to learn at higher levels than their parents were able to learn; to earn at higher levels than we were able to earn.

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.

I want to tell mayors, county chiefs and heads of big companies: don't just chase GDP growth; don't chase the biggest profits at the expense of our children and grandchildren and at the cost of sacrificing our ecological environment.