Roger Morris

I had worked in politics with Johnson and Nixon before becoming a historian and biographer. I kept discovering these dirtier, murkier threads in American politics that led back to Vegas' gambling interests and criminal connections.

Bob Gates is really emblematic of the modern CIA. He joins it in 1968, just a day before the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia. And, of course, he rises very quickly. In less than six years, he's on the National Security Council staff, at the closing weeks of Richard Nixon's presidency and then on into Gerald Ford.

I asked my designer friend, Sam Klemick, to make a headdress for me, drawing inspiration from 1920s headpieces, Athena and Joan of Arc. Before each show, I have this quiet meditative moment where I put the headdress on and gather my thoughts and strength.

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.