“Magic.” He shot photos and shook his head. “Pure magic, till we learn enough to understand it.” - Jack Williamson

Getting back at last to our initial question: Will academe kill SF? I don’t think so…
I do suspect that the critics are luring a few promising writers into the formless indulgence and the willful obscurity that has destroyed the popularity of modern poetry.

The mystery of it gets me. The builders of the trilithons and the road were high-tech wizards, but their skills didn’t save them. I’ve been wondering how they died. Maybe they got too good at the science of war.

The vampire legend, he might conclude, has served conveniently for many thousand years as a conventional folk expression of unconscious feelings of aggression and guilt.