Thomas Gibson

In a way, as an actor, you do all the preparation and then you want to forget it and just play the scene. As a director, you can't forget it because somebody will remind you that you forgot something. But you can know your plan well enough that you still have a certain amount of freedom.

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.