In general, I don't know when inspiration will pop up.
Bruce Sterling is one terrific writer and he's relatively new, but I don't know how long he's been doing it; he probably doesn't need the publicity anymore!
But... watching Steven Barnes taught me to treat my life like an art form.
And every friend I've got has been writing Mars stories. It was pretty clear I'd never catch up.
I've spent a lot of my life among people brighter than myself.
As for AIDS, it's a plague. We are human, we get plagues. They come along every so often, kill off two thirds of the population; in the next generation it's a quarter; after that it's a childhood disease.