[fjtorres]

I'm thinking they're looking in the wrong direction: SF (as a minority genre) doesn't mold the mood of the times but rather reflects it.

These are in fact depressing times for technocrats so it should hardly surprise anybody when the fiction that comes out is built off the dominant tone of the era. (Anybody remember the "New Wave" doom-and-gloom stories of the late 50s/early 60's? Or the stampede to Fantasy in the mid 70's?)

SF futures are most often extrapolations of the present so when the present forecloses optimism most writers will find themselves groping for ways to "get there from here" and concluding that dystopia is more likely than utopia.

DeGrasse Tyson is correct that NASA *should* be working on Advanced Enginneering R&D programs that might lead to solutions to the problems of the day. But the NASA that today exists isn't the NASA that used to do that work. The current NASA is a politicized, paper-shuffling, leaderless bureaucracy hunkered down just trying to justify the existence of their in-house staff and facilities in the face of a leadership that wants it to be more like DOE; a funnel for grants and contracts to the politically connected (ala Solyndra).

All we need to know is that the luddite in chief bemoans NASA's inability to inspire (with real-world successes) the way 60's era Hollywood fantasies "inspired" with cheesy special effects; that sees the agency the same way as the old soviet leaders saw *their* space program, as an exercise in Public Relations and flag-waving; that cancelled a structured, logical, and achievable program to build the tools needed to go explore deep space because "we've been there, done that", in favor of cheap stunts like being "the first to visit an asteroid" using existing tech. (And is now discovering that the kerosene burners and tin cans the "new NASA" is building can't reach even NEO asteroids.)

With NASA out of the picture and everybody else still trying to repeat 40-year old NASA feats or stuck in low earth orbit, why should writers join the mass delusion that we're on a road to bright sunnny futures?

Heinlein once said there were really only 4 types of SF stories:
- If this goes on...
- What if...?
- If only...
- The little tailor.

The last is the realm of space opera, of larger than life figures engaged in larger than life adventures and has never been terribly popular among editors at the main publishing houses. And the other three all involve extrapolation from the present. (or from a point in the past, in the case of alternate histories.)

I would posit that the popularity of sparkly vamps, super-hero movies, alternate history and steampunk all reflect the dominant tone of the times; that world civilization is on the road to a dark age and that bright and sunny futures are becoming the realm of fantasy, not SF.

The choice in SF today is between sheer escapism or grim futures because the case for extrapolating positive futures is too flimsy to convince even the writers.

It's going to take a lot of change in the real world before the fiction can credibly change tone.