What do you think will be the major themes writers will have to address in the coming decades? I'm trying to think ahead of my contemporaries here. How about extended lifespans? Maybe a novel around the psychological impact of living for 150 or even 200 years, thanks to advances in nanotech, stem cell research etc? Or how about the rise of China as a global superpower? As a European, I suspect the mass migration out of Africa into Europe will be a major event in the next 10 to 20 years. Native Europeans are not having enough children, whereas Africa's birth rate is the highest in the world. The birth rate of sub-Saharan Africans in particular is booming. Italy has been overwhelmed this year by boatloads of African migrants, mostly young men from Nigeria, the Congo etc. Racially and culturally the future of Europe is African and muslim. The French writer Houllebecq has already addressed this, imagining a future France under Sharia law. The European liberal establishment seem to believe the Africanization of Europe will be a good thing, so maybe a satire on their views would be quite striking and original? Is sci fi the future of fiction? Martin Amis recently said that in the future any great novelist or poet will have to be scientifically literate if he/ she is to be taken seriously. A 21st century Tolstoy or George Eliot will have to understand molecular biology and quantum mechanics!