The future is not what it used to be
Spider Robinson (of Callahan fame) is concerned for the future. With an upswing in the fantasy side of Speculative Fiction, and a downswing on the science side he feels it in incredible that young people no longer find the real future is unexciting. He sees this as a fear in technology.
I see it as people are not interested in the space opera aspect of SF. I see that people can't accept that attitudes in the future will be the same as today. Old SF in the 1950's had people acting in the same way as people from the 1950's. Today we see vastly different attitudes in many things. Look at how ubiquitous cellphones are now. The changes in methods of communication has changed peoples attitudes. Even SF roleplaying games have changed. Once Traveller defined, in games, the future, but the introduction of books with a cyberpunk theme has changed expectations.
Readers of SF have been too well educated to accept the science that allows fast interstellar exploration. Until there is enough publicity about a breakthrough in some sort of faster than light transport, readers get jarred by shoddy pseudo-science. It is easier to maintain a sense of disbelief of magic. A future where FTL occurs is a future with an ever-present information network, a future where biotech and nanotech has solved many of the frailties of human flesh.
The future coming is not in glistening spaceships.
It is digital.
It is biotechnology.
It is nanotechnology.
