"Bob Myers" hath wroth:

Wrong. Science fiction has mutated into social adventure, space
opera, and historical fantasy. I haven't seen any really technical
science fiction in many years.

Spider Robinson. Joe Haldeman. Larry Niven. Jerry
Pournelle. Ben Bova. Greg Egan. Stephen Baxter.

In the interest of brevity, I won't rattle off examples of how most of
those authors started out with hard technical science fiction, and
ended up recently writing what amounts to "future social problems"
type of sci-fi. At age 74, Ben Bova still cranks out excellent
stories but seems to be very light on the technology in the last few
years. Stephen Baxter is a scientist and really does well speculating
on where technology is sending us. Greg Egan is a mathemagician with
a rather creative view of artificial intelligence. Haldeman puts me
to sleep, Niven is just plain weird, and Pournelle is too militarist
for my liking. They've all done "hard" sci-fi writing, but as time
progresses, seem to be writing for a much different audience, such as
writing for TV or movies. That's where the space opera, social
adventure (chase scenes, crash and burn, and explosions) are coming
from. I still read Stephen Baxter, but none of the others. This is
the first I've heard of Spider Robinson, but will give his stuff a
look.

Arthur C. Clarke, who, thank the FSM, is still with us and writing.

Yeah, but he can certainly beat the "2001 Space Odyssey" theme to
death. At 89, I'm really impressed that he's still working. However,
his last few books have been co-authored by Stephen Baxter and read
more like Baxter's complex writing, than Clarke's neatly clipped short
lines.

Ok, I'll concede the hard sci-fi hasn't gone down the tubes completely
and that there are still authors catering to a technically astute
audience. However, even the best of these (as you've itemized) tend
to drift toward the popular media, mass market, and general audience
market, which deals primarily in entertainment. This entertainment is
invariably devoid of technology, lacking in a basis on physical
reality, and is dominated by space opera and general idiocy. For
every sci-fi author that knows his science, there are perhaps 50 that
are lacking. Little wonder that space opera predominates as it
requires very little technical expertise to write.

Maybe that's why I like reading Mr. Radium's muddled tech rants. It's
the closest approximation to science fiction I can easily find.

Sure, there's an AWFUL lot of crap out there - SF, like everything else,
obey's Sturgeon's Law - but the good stuff is still being written.
You just have to look for it.

These daze, I have to do more than look. I have to dig, excavate, and
filter to find it. However, I found a suitable replacement about 10
years ago. I was reading dot com business plans. Not only was I
being paid to rip them apart, but the products and services were some
of the best science fiction I had ever read. The authors of some of
those business plans really should be writing sci-fi stories. I
really miss the passing of the dot com era and the tremendous
technical imagination that helped make it happen.

Reminder: None of the sci-fi authors up to about 1970, ever predicted
the rise of personal computah. It was always the giant mainframe
(Multivac). Some came close with remote terminals, but even those had
a mainframe behind them. Oh well, can't get it right every time.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558