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It鈥檚 true that many of the old dreams of science fiction have been fulfilled, or bypassed. And it does feel as if we鈥檙e living through a time of accelerating change. But science fiction has 鈥� rarely 鈥� been about the prediction of a definite future, more about the anxieties and dreams of the present in which it is written. In H. G. Wells鈥荣 day the great shock of evolutionary theory was working its way through society, so Wells鈥檚 1895 classic The Time Machine is not really a prediction of the year 802,701 AD but an anguished meditation on the implications of Darwinism for humanity.

As science has moved on, a whole variety of science-fictional 鈥渇utures鈥� has been generated. In 1950s and 1960s we had tales of nuclear warfare and its aftermath, like Walter Miller鈥檚 . The 1980s saw an explosion of computing power that led to 鈥渃yberpunk鈥� fantasies such as . Today we have the possibilities of a trans-human future opened up by information technology and biotechnology 鈥� see books like as a response. And the great issues of climate change are explored in, for instance, Kim Stanley Robinson鈥荣 Science in the Capitol series and my own Flood. Science fiction is a way of dealing with change, of learning about it, of internalising it 鈥� not so much prophecy as a kind of mass therapy, perhaps. Of course nowadays you get a book like , a disaster story of the near future, published without any reference to the genre at all. I don鈥檛 particularly think this is bad. In fact it shows the success of sci-fi and its methods. Science fiction has been assimilated, but it鈥檚 still there, still serving the same function.

In the coming years, whatever else we run out of 鈥� oil, fresh water, clean air 鈥� change itself will not be in short supply. So there will be no shortage of raw material for science fiction, and a need for it, however it鈥檚 labelled in the bookshops.

Read all the articles in our Science Fiction Special