John Clute writes that science fiction around the start of the 21st century can be understood in two ways: "a vision of the triumph of science fiction as a genre and as a series of outstanding texts which figured to our gaze the significant futures that, during those years, came to pass ... [or]... indecipherable from the world during those years ... fatally indistinguishable from the world it attempted to adumbrate, to signify."
