Even a broken clock gets it right twice a day

I remember once reading a short story featuring a boys' school set on a spaceship. The ship was travelling from (probably) Earth to (probably) some colony world. Scientific accuracy was not rigorously enforced: witness the fact that the ship had no artificial gravity (so far, so good) and so everyone on board wore, um, weighted boots. In fact, I think one jolly schoolboy prank involved surreptitiously unlacing one boy's boot so that when he tries to come up to the front of the class his foot and leg float upwards, to general hilarity.

I must have been about 7 or 8 and I'm pretty sure it was included in a collection of similar gosh-wow boys' adventure tales. I'm guessing it wasn't a forgotten gem by some big name author.

But chiefly I remember a wonder material called, I think, viviform. As I recall this was a putty-like substance that could be moulded by hand and would then set diamond-hard. Useful for almost anything, really. I'm sure it played a key part in the plot, though I can't remember what or why. I didn't know it at the time but my generation was probably the first that really reaped the benefits of things like blu-tack and silly putty, and so viviform made sense. Much more than the school on the ship – which was essentially a terrestrial classroom; no prophetic visions of learning technology or anything like that – or the weighted boots, I know this made me think "yeah, why not?" Which is a very important think for a science fiction writer to have.

Why do I mention this now? Because someone seems to have invented viviform, that's why.

Gerry Anderson & the Return of Wind Power

A sleek, futuristic vehicle takes off and splits in two. One part is piloted safely back down to the the ground, the other heads for orbit. And there - this is the really cool bit - it changes shape, reconfigures and then returns to earth itself.

This is of course Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo design, unveiled today. It could so easily be out of a Gerry Anderson adventure - well, maybe apart from the fact that it returns safely. There's an added thrill in realising the project is backed by a multi-millionaire, though sadly not one with five sons and a purely platonic relationship with the flower of English aristocracy.

Gerry Anderson's vision of the future was of course flawed - it was undeniably technophile but the Health & Safety Executive was obviously strangled at birth (hence mile-high skyscrapers with no sprinker system, brought down by a fire in the basement) and, crucially, there were unlimited resources for all. If it didn't make lots of smoke and flame, it wasn't a proper machine. Sadly we know it's not going to be like that.

That's why I'm betting he never imagined that one day supertankers would be crossing the Atlantic powered by kites - my second favourite story from the BBC's Science/Nature page. I'll be honest - that's even cooler than SpaceShipTwo (though I don't want it to be) and a lot more useful.

When I accidentally lived in London for six months, I did all the touristy things one does and I was astonished to find that Westminster Abbey was white, Parliament was a kind of golden yellow, other buildings were all kinds of shades. You could see the stonework. When I came up to London as a kid, everything was black. London had finally cleaned itself up while I was growing, shedding centuries of soot and exhaust and grime. Go London.

We know so much more than we used to about the environment, about materials, about micro-engineering, about energy conservation. We can manage a pretty good lifestyle for a whole lot less than we did. There will be further changes ahead and some of them will take getting used to: I doubt I'll be cooking or heating my house with natural gas for the rest of my life and I certainly won't be driving a car powered by fossil fuels for much longer. There's a lot of inertia to overcome, dead infrastructure to get rid of. New superpowers will arise and the West will decline. But a new equilibrium will be found and it will be worth it. I really feel that future historians will decide it was during my lifetime that we finally found the balance between a decent standard of living and looking after the world. That makes me quite proud.