In the Golden Age of SF, it was always about nostalgia for the future, a basically optimistic fantasy about how mankind's adventurous spirit and technical prowess would solve all obstacles. We know better now, we are now hip to "unforeseen consequences", and have seen too many technical marvels show themselves to generate more problems than they solve, and the general dehumanization of Man in the techno-state.

Its part of a general trend in all literature now, to explore the darker side of human nature, and to examine ordinary people fracturing under severe stress, rather than showcasing uber-capable heroes conquering against all odds.

Strangely enough, the earliest SF, like Verne, Wells, Orwell and Huxley, were pretty gloomy, and seriously examined the negative side of technology. One of the earliest critical studies of SF, Kingsley Amis' "New Maps of Hell" deconstructs this era quite effectively. It wasn't until the Pulp Fiction days of the 40s and 50s, that SF really became a hymnn to tomorrow. It was a literature for adolescents and I read it and loved it as an adolescent. It played a big role in forming the kind of person I grew up to be. But I did grow up, and so did SF.

It probably started with Vonnegut's "Player Piano" (1952) one of the most pessimistic yet eerily prescient forecasts of America's (and the world's)future which he playfully dedicated to America's "managers and engineers". People like Bob Silverberg, my personal favorite, picked up the torch and ran with it in the New Wave of the 60s, perhaps reflecting what was going on in society at the time.

This is what SF should be all about. It can't really predict new technologies, nobody can, but a good writer can speculate on the effect those technologies will have on the human condition. Does literature form the times? Or is it the other way round, and literature only reflects the spirit of the age?

I can't recommend Player Piano more highly. After over a half century since it first appeared, you will be asking yourself "How could Vonnegut have possibly known that was coming?" Its not the technical accuracy of his predictions, but the human consequences they had on his characters which you will find so hauntingly familiar.