I credit my paternal grandmother with engendering in me a love of reading. She retired to bed with a book (usually historical novels) every afternoon and it was my job to return her loans and collect her new titles when the Mobile Library (a converted bus) visiting out little rural community each week. She also made sure I took out my own loans with the wartime adventure novels of Alistair McLean being the first I can remember eagerly devouring. Science Fiction then became my favourite genre with the ‘other worlds’ of Robert A Heinlein and Isaac Asimov becoming as familiar to me as my own.