A Thought. Comments? (SF and F Discussion)

So this was a random thought I had a week or so ago on my hour long drive to work and I thought I'd throw it out there to see what people thought. In the SF and F industry, there has recently been much discussion about the "decline" in SF being written and published, and that Fantasy has been taking over. Now, I'm NOT going to talk about the "different" between SF and F here, that's not the point of the discussion or the thought. Rather, I had a thought about WHY there seems to be this shift between the two.

I wonder if the shift has to do with society. Specifically, with how the society feels about where we are as a group. "Back then", when SF seemed a little more prevalent (I'm not sure when this "back then" would be, which is why I'm not being more specific here), I get the impression that perhaps we weren't as happy with ourselves and our society. I wasn't around then, or if I was, I was more concerned about my tree fort I'd built in the woods, called the Igloo. But from what I've heard about life then, there were . . . issues. Society itself was in turmoil. We didn't know where everything was headed, where WE were headed, and we looked to the future. Thus we produced more SF themed stories and novels. Our current lives weren't as good or as settled as we would have liked, so we looked forward to a time when things MIGHT be better, where the world might be more simple. MADE more simply by technology. So we were in a bad place and wanted to imagine a better place, but not just ANY better place (fantasy can always produce "better" places as easily as SF). A better place where we could imagine we may be headed. You can't do that with fantasy. SF gives you the hope, or leaves you with the hope, that the world and society may end up in that imaginary place. Perhaps this is why we were so interested in space and NASA and getting to the moon, and now most people could care less what NASA is doing. (Not the fandom of course; I read practically everything that NASA does . . . when it shows up in the news.)

Now, the world did become a "better" place, and by this I mean some of those issues that produced our disillusionment with the world were resolved or were settled in some way. At this point, we didn't need that elusive hope of a better future, because we were more or less content with the world we already had. So we weren't looking forward so much any more. Because of this, the effort to produce SF declined, and we saw an upsurge in the fantasy market instead. Why? Because if you're content with the world you have, you start looking at other worlds. And you aren't looking FORWARD any more for that world, you're content to look at the past (medieval-style worlds) or just something different. There's no need to look forward because everything around you is mostly OK.

Before anyone starts jumping on me about saying the world at the moment is OK and that's why we have a prevalence of fantasy, I'm not saying the current world is perfect by any means. But when we compare our situation now to some of the situations in the past . . . well, we're better off than we've been before. And besides, this is just a thought. It's certainly not a scientific study.

So what do you guys think? Do we produce more SF when we aren't happy with our current situation and want or NEED to see a better future for ourselves? Do we write more fantasy when we're generally settled or our problems don't seem as overwhelming and hopeless? Or am I just totally off my rocker?