Comment by ViktorRay

I think Neal Stephenson had it backwards. The utopian science fiction comes second and is more of a reaction against the pessimistic dystopian science fiction.

Frankenstein is considered by many to be among the first science fiction books and is essentially a Black Mirror story from the 1800's. You had HG Wells and War of the Worlds for example. The Time Machine by HG Wells also portrays a possible negative vision for humanity based on an extrapolation of the social trends of the time.

Look at Asimov's robot stories. The orignal "robot" story was not from Asimov but a pessimistic story written in the 1920's about killer robots attacking people and being violent and all that. Asimov's optimistic peaceful robot stories were actually a reaction to the pessmistic violent robot stories that had been popular previously.

I think humans generally over the past few centuries have had uneasy feelings about technological changes and then that is reflected in dystopian, negative fiction. People react to that negativity by intentionally writing bright optimistic positive science fiction stories.

Look at Star Trek the Original Series for my final example. That tv show came out during the turmoil of the late 1960's and it responded to that turmoil and feelings of nuclear holocaust with a vision of the future that was filled with optimism and idealism.