In The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells reminds us that 'No one would have believed' in the last years of the nineteenth century we were being watched by extraterrestrial intelligences: 'And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.' Since then we have had a century full of fictions of galactic imperialism, of colonies in space, and of meetings with (and massacres of) intelligent and interestingly-gendered extraterrestrials; but no one (I suggest) can take these fictions seriously any more. If science fiction is conceived as metaphor or as myth it does not matter too much if the same old stuff goes on pouring out, but for the fact of our great disillusionment. And early in the twenty-first century . . . ? Not, I hope, a new war of the worlds, but perhaps a new science fiction, prophetic or parodic, keeping one step ahead of the cultural...