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I'm going all 'meta' for a second, so bear with me (or not, as you prefer).
We long ago reached a critical mass in terms of both variety and sheer numbers of SF novels that there's no longer any sensible way to speak definitively about "the genre." No one can gain substantial knowledge of the field without also acquiring a unique (to the individual or their subset of fellow-readers) set of biases, insights, and blind spots. I know Post-Modernism isn't popular 'round these parts, but it should be clear as day to anyone discussing books on an internet forum that every reading is an act of translation and interpretation. There's no point discussing what a book is "really about" or what's "really going on" with the genre, because there is no "really about," and no "really going on." In a very real sense, everyone is reading a different genre, but all calling it by the same name (or names, noting the SF/Sci-Fi/SyFy digression).
Which is all to say, even going through the process of forming some narrative about how SF is {dying, thriving, declining, resurging, gamboling widdershins} is absurd. It's a narrative you're imposing on the set of information you have about the genre, in the context in which you came by that information, and as such it is neither true nor false. We live in an increasingly speculative present, and my favorite SF is the stuff that addresses the shifting ground on which we stand, whether far removed in time/space (Anathem, A Fire Upon the Deep) or within my likely lifetime (Ready Player One).
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