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SilasBarta comments on Peter Thiel warns of upcoming (and current) stagnation - Less Wrong
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I have. There are still people publishing books that go in the SF section of the bookstore, but I could count off on one hand the number of authors I can remember who are feeding people hope instead of stylish postmodern cynicism.
"SF don't inspire hope anymore" does not imply "SF has collapsed as a literary genre"; I'm not aware of "inspiring hope" being a factor in judging the existence of a literary genre.
However, I think a relevant data point in favor of Thiel's claim is this: where is our 2001: A Space Odyssey? That is, a work of hard-core sci-fi (10 on the "Mohs scale" of sci-fi) that's achieved mainstream success and entered the broader culture.
I cannot see how can anyone see 2001 as "inspiring hope".
Set in crapsack world of overpopulation, famine and imminent nuclear war, where human race was from the beginning a toy of omnipotent aliens. What hope? Our world in 2001 was not like in "2001", it was much better.
This could be a dispute about the definition of SF: if you consider the core of SF to be something antithetical to "stylish postmodern cynicism," then maybe it has come on rough times. If you use the same definition the bookstores do, on the other hand, it's doing fine.
The lack of such in the last few years may be more of an indication that that niche has simply already been filled? If someone did a hard scifi space story how inevitable is it that it will be compared to 2001?