Peter Asher

Well, for the reasons I mention above, although I am not sure the live shows were really so brilliant - but nobody could hear much so perhaps it did not matter! It was certainly a very exciting time for us all.

If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it.

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.