Superunification underwent a major paradigm shift in 1984 when eleven-dimensional supergravity was knocked off its pedestal by ten-dimensional superstrings. This last year has witnessed a new shift of equal proportions:
Perturbative ten-dimensional superstrings have in their turn been superseded by.
A new non-perturbative theory called {\it $M$-theory}, which describes supermembranes and superfivebranes, which subsumes all five consistent string theories and whose low energy limit is, ironically, eleven-dimensional supergravity.