“As well as being regarded with a certain warmth, there’s also a sense of mistrust around the genre. Writers fear that it’s somehow a bit uncool – a bit 70s – and so we get interminable plays about Urgent Contemporary Issues rather than coolly speculative projections. It’s a shame. After all, some of the 20th century’s greatest literature was set in the future – consider 1984, Brave New World and A Clockwork Orange.”