I think the rising and falling popularity of areas like hard SF and far-future SF is, to a considerable extent, the same as any other fashion.

There may be something to the suggestion about the pace of technological change intimidating writers, though - it's been awfully hard to keep ahead of real developments.

There are a significant number of people who appreciate what we do, and most of them gravitate to Analog because this is where they can find it. The other magazines tend to share their audiences, which may result in each of them having a smaller market share.

And, of course, some SF is set close enough to here and now that Anglo and European do apply. Since many of the writers come from those backgrounds, so does much of the fiction.

As for sticking strictly to presently known science, I will simply point out that we have already experienced at least two major revolutions in science in this century alone.

What SF can do better than anything else is show us the range of our possible futures, and what we can do to realize the good ones and avoid the nasty ones.

intricately and intriguingly woven, lots of fun, and extremely thought provoking.