Felicity Kendal

I don't think I've ever not had a dark side. But one of the wonderful reasons why you go into this business is that half your life you live in a fantasy, which is somebody else's life. It's actually a great release because you're not having to deal with the itty-bitty bits of life.

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.