Sam Taylor-Wood

A lot of children remember seeing cartoons, 'Pinocchio' or 'Bambi' or something that breaks their heart. I remember seeing 'The Blue Angel' and it breaking my heart. It was the first time I realised there was an adult world - that adults could damage each other or destroy each other emotionally.

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.

The importance of heart health became very real for me when my father died of heart disease seven years ago. Having experienced the loss first hand, I am inspired to do everything I can to break the cycle and prevent families from losing loved ones to this preventable disease.

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.