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Are you kidding? No multiverse, no parallel Earths? Do the physicists killing off the many-worlds idea have no conscience? A whole subgenre of sci-fi is damned to extinction. Gone, vanished down a literary black hole with just a few dog-eared remnants littering the non-event horizon. Me? I'm just finishing an Adrian Tchaikovsky book involving... oh, …

The only eco-novel of the many I have read that doesn't demonise climate deniers is Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver. Here, you can see their good intentions, their misunderstandings and their humanity, as author Kurt Gray shows in his book Outraged , reviewed on your pages. This made me realise I had been demonising them …

I can slightly move the "useless" muscle that lets some people wiggle their ears. Of more interest is that I feel the muscle slightly twitch when someone/something approaches outside of my visual field. It feels almost like a sixth sense, but obviously it is linked to my auditory system picking up a sound I don't …

In fire-prone southern Australia, intentional burning to combat wildfire risk is controversial. These burns run for weeks every autumn and the smoke is a health and environmental hazard ( 1 February, p 12 ). The effect on wildlife and plants seems to be rarely taken into account. Fire does reduce fine, easily burned plant matter, …

LanzaTech's fermentation process to make "defossilised" polyester appears to need more reactive inputs, which is why it favours hot blast furnace exhaust that contains carbon monoxide and hydrogen, as well as carbon dioxide, rather than the cool, pure, waste CO 2 streams that reader Dave Covell suggested ( Letters, 1 February ).

Your article on sabre teeth reminds me of a visit I made to a fossil site in South Africa. Using a hominid skull and two curved fingers, a researcher graphically illustrated how a sabre-toothed tiger could leap on an unfortunate hominid from behind and grab its skull, with its two fangs nicely inserting into the …

In his review of Jeff Sebo's book, Michael Marshall writes that we "can never be 100 per cent sure if another being is conscious". Perhaps we can if consciousness is a question of degree, a continuum of levels of awareness, not an either/or thing. Think back to your earliest childhood memory – it may be …

Paul Friedlander says past colonisation has been a hunt for opportunities to trade or get rich, hence the same will apply to Mars. This leaves out one of the strongest drivers: curiosity/adventure. It is often assumed that billionaires are motivated by money, but if you look at Martian colony proponent Elon Musk's track record, he …

The problem with recognition of alien intelligence raised in your review of Adrian Tchaikovsky's book Shroud was also tackled in a short sci-fi story from the 1970s, in which some humans get stuck on a very warm and humid planet where every artefact they have rapidly rusts or rots. Aliens arrive, assume they are indigenous …

Beth Morrell makes the excellent point that the modern world is grossly mismatched to the one in which we evolved. The restraints of our evolution on our thinking are there to be seen in our actions. We continue to wreck the planet, render its air toxic, pollute rivers, destroy wildlife and slaughter our own kind. …