Nigel Lawson

I remember when we ignored Europe and we were totally committed to the Commonwealth and the former Empire, and thought imperial preference was the only thing which enabled us to survive, that was a mistake, and it's a similar mistake to feel Britain can't be a hugely successfully country - economically and in any other way - outside the E.U.

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.