Ian McEwan has dominated the decade. Photograph: AP

The British fiction scene this decade has been characterised by the dominance of Ian McEwan. It's in the nature of literature that the existing case is always altered. It's also true that the most interesting material tends to come from the cultural periphery, as Zadie Smith did with White Teeth in 2000 (easy to forget her humble roots, now that she is so established). What is needed now is a novelist from the underclass.

Of existing material, John Lanchester's Mr Phillips and Andrew O'Hagan's Be Near Me will join White Teeth in persisting. I believe we will see more engagement with scientific and technical themes before the decade is out, replacing the historical subject matter that has concerned many novelists (including myself) since 2000. Authors in all periods have tended to set novels between 10 and 50 years previously, but the retrospection does seem very marked at the moment, as if over-ripe. Non-fiction has seen a retreat from life narratives of human beings into histories of objects and phenomena as they affect us over long periods, while group biographies have become more common than big volumes about single figures.

These changes may be part of a larger shift of focus from the individual to the social or the networked individual. In respect of which, people have kept trying to invent an electronic reader. Perhaps it will only work when Apple does it. In terms of other reading, a general turn away from printed page to screen has already taken place.

It has not been a good decade for poetry but look out for John McAuliffe and Keston Sutherland. I expect that genre to thrive again, along with other short forms better suited to the screen.