No, I don't think you're off your rocker. But I think it's more complicated than that, so I'll throw my nickel into the pot.
I'm Sam's age. I started reading SF when I was 9 or 10, back when dinosaurs still walked the earth. The kids section of the library was where most, if not all, of the Bradbury, Asimov and Heinlein books were. I ate all of them up, as well as the Danny Dunn books and lord knows what else. I loved all of it.
And every single thing in those books didn't exist and was impossible at the time. All of it. Authors I know who write SF tell me the biggest hurdle they face is thinking up something cool enough or far fetched enough it won't be outdated by the time the book is published. Technology and society move so much faster now and keep moving faster. Each new innovation opens the door to another.
That's part of it. Another part is that a big part of SF was co-opted by media. I've heard very convincing arguments that just as much SF is being written as ever, but it's shifted to TV and movies.
When I was a kid SF brought that sense of Wow and Wonder I needed and the characters were enough for me. Sometime in the late 70's I just about abandoned SF completely for Fantasy as a reader. In the search for that next cool idea, it felt to me that authors at that time sacrificed character. If I don't care about the characters in a book I don't stick with it. The Fantasy I began to find not only gave me the sense of wonder I wanted, but gave me characters that were more than central casting spacemen.
The explosion in Fantasy also started around this time if I remember correctly. More Fantasy appeared on the shelves because that was what people were buying. It gave them what they wanted.
Personally, I could find believable women characters in fantasy and the books were frequently written by women. Believable women seemed to go hand in hand with believable men. That was important to me and sadly lacking in the SF books of the time. That's changed a lot in the last five or ten years. More SF is being written by women and the focus is more on the story and the characters. I read more SF now than I have for years.
And I could be totally and utterly wrong, but that's the change I saw.
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I'm Sam's age. I started reading SF when I was 9 or 10, back when dinosaurs still walked the earth. The kids section of the library was where most, if not all, of the Bradbury, Asimov and Heinlein books were. I ate all of them up, as well as the Danny Dunn books and lord knows what else. I loved all of it.
And every single thing in those books didn't exist and was impossible at the time. All of it. Authors I know who write SF tell me the biggest hurdle they face is thinking up something cool enough or far fetched enough it won't be outdated by the time the book is published. Technology and society move so much faster now and keep moving faster. Each new innovation opens the door to another.
That's part of it. Another part is that a big part of SF was co-opted by media. I've heard very convincing arguments that just as much SF is being written as ever, but it's shifted to TV and movies.
When I was a kid SF brought that sense of Wow and Wonder I needed and the characters were enough for me. Sometime in the late 70's I just about abandoned SF completely for Fantasy as a reader. In the search for that next cool idea, it felt to me that authors at that time sacrificed character. If I don't care about the characters in a book I don't stick with it. The Fantasy I began to find not only gave me the sense of wonder I wanted, but gave me characters that were more than central casting spacemen.
The explosion in Fantasy also started around this time if I remember correctly. More Fantasy appeared on the shelves because that was what people were buying. It gave them what they wanted.
Personally, I could find believable women characters in fantasy and the books were frequently written by women. Believable women seemed to go hand in hand with believable men. That was important to me and sadly lacking in the SF books of the time. That's changed a lot in the last five or ten years. More SF is being written by women and the focus is more on the story and the characters. I read more SF now than I have for years.
And I could be totally and utterly wrong, but that's the change I saw.