It’s strange that the most important and relevant fiction of our era — that being sf/speculative fiction — has been the most ignored by the critical establishment (except for perhaps horror fiction).

Doesn’t really matter as it achieved cultural dominance over time anyway due to its relevance.

I don’t know enough about literary and critical history to say if this is a trend, but I do know that as novel-writing became more common and popular in the late 1700s and into 1800s, for nearly 100 years afterward this art form was spurned by the academic establishment as trivial and un-intellectual.

History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. I suspect that’s what we’re seeing here.

And when an sf work does become critically relevant, it is “promoted” out of its genre, though it really doesn’t differ from those things left in the genre ghetto (1984 and Brave New World being more well-known examples).