Most folks tend to think what's most modern is what's best.
And, insofar as a recent vintage connotes a greater correlation to their (current) wants, most folks are right.
But, Science Fiction literature explodes that rule.
The limitations of the genre are the limitations of the human capacity to articulate the question "What if?" -- in all its fantastical and varied forms.
Given such tremendous scope of story-telling possibility, you'll discover that Science Fact, taken as a whole, is very small against the Practical Infinity of Science Fi. And, even more humbling to those who think our "progress" of the last 50 years or so amounts to very much, there ain't nothin' on the list of things we can do, today, wasn't already dreamed up long before the inventors of the art's current state were even born.
Case in point:
Dune will teach ya, also, that it ain't through technological innovation that the wisest of our Speculative Literary Minds have broached the realm of Possibility.
Inevitably, they've done it by conjecturing on the likely qualities of Humanity, as it might be in some unfathomable existence, far removed from us by distance and by time --
j-