Suzanne Fields

Dostoevski does not tell you what to think about his legend, but he requires that you think about it. The novelist was a deeply religious man and he always thought many readers missed that point about him.

Women can break down barriers to opportunity, and men, many of them reluctantly, have learned to relate to women as their equals in thought and action. But except for an eccentric few, women do not want to become warriors.

Surrounded by a burgeoning human population, Asian elephants have to contend with the spread of settlements and farming, and the demands of rapidly developing nations: plantations, mines, railways, and irrigation canals have carved up former wilderness.

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.