Rodney Frelinghuysen

The Keystone pipeline is one of those things that's sort of a political driver. And mostly, the Republicans use it to sort of embarrass the president and embarrass quite a few Democrats who feel that there's a potential for an environmental disaster.

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.