Tom Brokaw

Every time I see documentaries or infomercials about little kids with cancer, I just freak out. It affects me on the highest emotional level... Anytime I think about it, it makes me sadder than anything I can think of.

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.