Truly pessimistic science fiction would have
- people worshipping an AI God which is demonstrably dumber than a dog
- friendly humanoid robots which don't really understand how to walk down a flight of stairs
- gravitational warp drives which are purely cosmetic and cannot travel anywhere, though it leads to terrible cancer
- a Potemkin Dyson Sphere where only 5% of the panels work and the government blames out-of-system immigrants for the blackouts
[1] https://xcancel.com/colin_fraser/status/1911129344979964207#...
I noticed that the novels at the end of Nature (the journal) were sad and weird, but I thought it was probably an editorial choice to look "modern".
Yet recently, I read SF novels with authors sorted alphabetically, and it struck me again how weird and sad 21st-century novels are.
Ada Palmer had a good write-up on Hopepunk. Many of the example books come towards the latter half of the write-up. https://beforewegoblog.com/purity-and-futures-of-hard-work-b...