Ofcourse, now I'm talking about books. Although there also isn't really an abundance of television series that can be seen as science fiction. Sure, Battlestar Galactica is pretty big but that's done this season and is a remake to begin with. Stargate is big too, but that got started well over ten years ago. Still going strong with Stargate Atlantis but not new anymore.
Doctor Who? About the oldest still running televsion series out there, even if there were huge gaps in continuity as it has been stopped for quite a long time before the recent new series. Torchwood, that's new. Also quite bad so I won't count it as one. (as always, just imo!)
Living in Europe, and Belgium to boot, that does mean that if there are new shows, we're the last country on earth to see them. Star Trek Enterprise was never even shown in full, BSG has only begun after the third season started, forget Firefly completely. The BBC used to be trustworthy and picked up shows pretty quickly, but those days seem to be gone I'ld say.
No, what I wanted to start a thread on was literature. In the "glory days" (a relative term naturally, all depends on personal taste), well known and great authors were in large supply. Ever since the eighties and nineties, the number decreases rather rapidly. Asimov, Heinlein, ****, C. Clark, Wyndham (granted, he's been dead for a long time now), Zelazny, Vonnegut,... Vance and Moorcock, perhaps Gibson, would seem to me to be the last large names that deal with science fiction out there.
My biggest worry would be that I can only name a few younger science fiction authors, and none that have the renown of the ones above. Sure, everyone started out young and unknown though. For instance John C. Wright has a very good trilogy with The Golden Age and has written a fair amount of books so far. If not for a fellow poster on a different site, I'ld never have heard of him.
Ofcourse, problem partially would be the media and publishers, definitely in local areas. As a different poster here can confirm, not always easy to find fantasy or science fiction books translated here, always the problem with being a fairly small language market. And without a decent publishing company finding good new material, it's not always easy to roam for instance amazon for new authors. The current focus here would be fantasy, only logical given the huge attention around Lord of the Rings, Narnia and Harry Potter, when the target market is small aim on what will sell and take little chances.
I'm to blame as well though, I've always been lazy and have stuck with the known writers. Ofcourse, now that supply has run dry, I'll have to look elsewhere.
So, anyone out there know good new writers? Is the genre gone, or has it changed into something I can't really compare anymore with what used to be released? Am I exaggerating?