I don’t think sci-fi and fantasy are that clear-cut. A lot of fantasy is quite hopeful (the bad guys pretty much always lose at the end of the story), and it’s kind of 50:50 whether it depicts the past as better or worse than it was. e.g. the shire in Lord of the Rings is practically a utopia, despite not being completely unrealistic for a pre-industrial society (it probably looks a lot more utopian than it is because most of the hobbit characters we know are aristocrats).
Literature is, generally, definitely not about happy feelings, though.
I don’t think sci-fi and fantasy are that clear-cut. A lot of fantasy is quite hopeful (the bad guys pretty much always lose at the end of the story), and it’s kind of 50:50 whether it depicts the past as better or worse than it was. e.g. the shire in Lord of the Rings is practically a utopia, despite not being completely unrealistic for a pre-industrial society (it probably looks a lot more utopian than it is because most of the hobbit characters we know are aristocrats).
Literature is, generally, definitely not about happy feelings, though.
This is Farmer Maggot erasure and I won’t have it