Nature
It's genuinely sad that last night's proceedings are not higher on the cultural agenda and that the gleaming new Kings Place auditorium was only half full. But as one of the participants pointed out, 50 years on from C P Snow's Two Cultures, there is still an arts establishment for whom sci-fi means Star Trek, and the ludicrous guff of Independence Day touches more of a nerve than Arthur C Clarke's visionary treatment of the same subject-matter in Childhood's End.