The paper is a survey and critical overview of recent work on the extension of logic programming to perform abductive reasoning (abductive logic programming). We outline the general framework of abduction and its applications to knowledge assimilation and default reasoning; and we introduce an argumentation-theoretic approach to the use of abduction as an interpretation for negation as failure. We also analyse the links between abduction and the extension of logic programming obtained by adding a form of explicit negation. Finally we discuss the relation between abduction and truth maintenance.