I've got a strange pantheon of heroes, not just scientists and science-fiction writers - but also poets, mad-philosophers, artistes and engineers - but HG Welles has been right up near the top for me from very early days - not only because he was brilliant, prophetic and deeply compassionate (and single-handedly invented war-gaming) - but also because he found extremely fun-to-read ways to say things that were very hard for people to hear at the time.