Interlude: The Pain of Nerdery Continues

Guardian Books is again talking about Genre. This time about Science Fiction that is marketed as Literary Fiction. It's a pretty standard article on the whole frustration with the public's perception of Sci-Fi but it does put forth a theory on why this is.

Perhaps the problem is that our present has caught up with the future presented to us by the pioneers of science fiction. Back in the 40s and 50s, when bright-and-shiny/dark-and-dangerous futures were given to us by the pulps, they were truly beyond anyone's ken. Now we are actually living in a science fiction future, is it fair to label a novel that extrapolates from what is possible today to what will probably be possible tomorrow...

Personally, I blame Star Wars but even that is blatantly ignorant and discounts the effects of 50s Science Fiction film on the cultural perception of the silliness of the whole genre.

I'd love to be able to say something like back then we had serious movies with silly effects but now we have silly movies with serious effects and the fact that we've only managed to shift the silly rather than get rid of it all together as what is keeping the genre from attaining a higher cultural standing, but I don't think I have the knowledge to really back that instinctual feeling up.

I honestly don't know.