science fiction

My parents read science fiction, so I was introduced to it at a young age. I remember my father reading Piers Anthony's Blue Adept to me when I was seven - and even though that is as much fantasy as SF, it gives you the idea.

Science fiction inspires and is inspired by real science and technology. Many inventions predicted by SF writers have emerged or are emerging into the real world - everything from lasers to online avatars. Trouble is, a lot of those predictions were made in the late 19th and early to mid 20th Centuries. Lately.. there doesn't seem to be a lot of it happening.

PC Pro (UK) has an article which basically asks if science fiction as a genre has run out of steam. Although there is still good SF being written, much of it is either space opera or otherwise very much social SF, dealing with ideas such as first contact.

I don't know if it's true; there are other factors at play here. It is increasingly difficult for new authors to get published, due to the lack of small publishing houses which are willing to take a risk on a first novel in what is still viewed as a niche or non-literary genre. There are fewer magazines which will publish SF short stories. But if it is true, if there are fewer innovative ideas coming out of science fiction writing, think about what that means.

Either our culture and technology are entering a period of decadence and and decline - or it's just getting harder to make useful predictions that won't be out of date by the time the novel is finished and goes to print a year later.

In other words things are just changing so fast that writers don't have time to keep up and imagine fourteen steps ahead.