Between potential natural disasters like asteroid strikes and plagues, and man-made threats like nuclear weapons and biological warfare, the risk that humanity will be destroyed by some catastrophe is unacceptably high. The solution, it seems to me (and to others, like Stephen Hawking), is for civilization to expand so widely that no plausible disaster will wipe us all out.

On this metric, the golden age approach to technology—all those rocket ships and Mars bases—looks better: Facebook probably won’t save us from economic stagnation; it certainly won’t save us from an asteroid.

Besides, the golden age approach is just more inspiring. Novels about brooding antiheroes may be good literature, but they likely won’t inspire teenagers to study physics or engineering. Golden age science fiction—and in particular, those Heinlein junior novels such as Have Space Suit—Will Travel or Rocket Ship Galileo—did that.

Neal Stephenson is putting together an anthology of pro-progress science fiction. And SF writer Sarah A. Hoyt, author of DarkShip Thieves, thinks the balance between utopian and dystopian science fiction is already swinging back toward the positive. As evidence, she points to new works such as Ric Locke’s Temporary Duty, written in the spirit of those old Heinlein novels and trumpeting technical knowledge and self-reliance rather than introspection.