there’s still goofy magic sci-fi designs now, and there have always been more ‘realistic’ designs based on (to varying degrees) real scientific and engineering knowhow. the only way one could come to this conclusion would be by cherry-picking your examples. if you compare ‘the jetsons’ to ‘mass effect’, sure, it supports your conclusion, but on the other hand, contrasting ‘rick and morty’ against ‘2001: a space odyssey’ would give a rather different conclusion.
I finished reading Dragon’s Egg (1980) recently and at the back of the book was schematics, drawings, and layouts describing the various things in the novel.
There, indeed, have always been varying levels of “hardness” in sci-fi.
there’s still goofy magic sci-fi designs now, and there have always been more ‘realistic’ designs based on (to varying degrees) real scientific and engineering knowhow. the only way one could come to this conclusion would be by cherry-picking your examples. if you compare ‘the jetsons’ to ‘mass effect’, sure, it supports your conclusion, but on the other hand, contrasting ‘rick and morty’ against ‘2001: a space odyssey’ would give a rather different conclusion.
I finished reading Dragon’s Egg (1980) recently and at the back of the book was schematics, drawings, and layouts describing the various things in the novel.
There, indeed, have always been varying levels of “hardness” in sci-fi.
I really love The Expanse for that, but it also ruined basically every other sci-fi for me.