Peter O'Toole

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.

The plumbing and pluvial dynamics of the Amazon, the largest freshwater system on Earth, are still far from understood. This is partly because it is a semi-open system. Moisture flows in and out unpredictably. A lot of nonlinear feedback loops and 'remote influences' - continental, transcontinental, oceanic, meteorological - come into play.