Michael Rady

My girlfriend in eighth grade had been asking her friends when I was going to kiss her. At a dance, my buddy said, 'You better do it now!' I went in for it. I felt like the coolest person on the face of the earth. A week or two later, she broke up with me.

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.