A utopian future for the planet: How ‘human solidarity’ can see us through

Sci-fi stories feel irrelevant to writer Kim Stanley Robinson now as his focus shifts to climate change

Technology really can be stranger than fiction at times

The changes that replaced landlines with powerful pocket computers were neither obvious nor a foregone conclusion in the 1990s

It is rare to hear anybody arguing for the inherent inferiority of popular fiction

Tóibín’s error when discussing the prose in genre fiction was to move from ‘I just get bored’ to ‘it’s blank, it’s nothing’

100 books by women you have to read

Iris Murdoch, Edna O’Brien, Marian Keyes and Eimear McBride all appear on the list

The most recent version of ourselves is not the true version – it’s good to remember that

We are multiplicities of self – there is not one kind of beauty, or accomplishment or contentment

Ursula K Le Guin, acclaimed fantasy and science fiction writer, is dead at 88

Several of the author’s books have been in print for almost 50 years

‘I want to understand the anger in the world’

John Tiffany is the genial man behind the Abbey’s ‘Let the Right One In’, is also the most sought-after director in the world

The man trying to reinvent the future of food with Soylent

Meal substitute entrepreneur Rob Rhinehart lives in a shipping container with no water

Léan Cullinan on learning to love rewriting

This week, to mark the end of our How to Write a Book series, we have a daily Q&A with a debut author

Bad lands: Fahrenheit 451 and other fiery dystopias

Ray Bradbury’s great dystopian vision is 60. Thankfully the book-burning world it depicts has not yet come to pass, so we can still read it and other dark visions

From up on Poppy Hill