Tamara Mellon

There have been moments in my career when I've had to be tough and I've had to step up to the plate - but usually that's because a man has underestimated me. But other than that, I wouldn't say I'm a tough person.

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.

At one point, I didn't get out of bed for, I think, three months, and I went down to the bottom of the hill one day and I had to call somebody to get me to come back up - come pick me up because I couldn't physically walk up the hill.