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The subject of the thread is less about understanding SF, and more about understanding SF's place in society. It cannot be denied that there has been a downward shift in public interest in the SF genre, just as there has been a decreasing interest in (or outright hostility towards) science in general.
However, SF has been a part of other genres for most of its lifetime, especially adventure, drama, horror and comedy. With most other genres, the sub-genre is not included with the overriding genre--for instance, City Slickers is considered a comedy, not a western, or a western comedy--and I think we've reached the point where SF can be the unstated subgenre (or, if a sub-genre descriptor is a must, to use more accurate labels to modify the main genre, ie, future drama, tech adventure, space horror, etc).
In that sense, SF is not dying; it's becoming more fully integrated into the sub-genres of modern storytelling, to the extent that in many cases it doesn't need to be highlighted or singled out as an element.
(FYI: It may be clear to some that I'm viewing this as a possible source of re-labeling my own existing and future works.)
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