Roger Penrose

Nine years after I had my own accident, I find that in trying to go back to doing those things that I used to do just doesn't fit. Everything seems to just fall apart. I don't know why but I think it is because I am this new creature.

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.