Contemporary SF with Classic Influences?
I have a somewhat unusual question about the current SF landscape. I'm a writer working outside of SF, and I have an idea sketched out that sits squarely within soft science fiction and overlaps into horror. My influences come mainly from the classics, and I'm wondering if SF has moved on substantially from them. Before writing it, I'm trying to assess the project's publications odds and whether any of these elements would create significant barriers. Any thoughts would be helpful.
Simply, I love 19th and early 20th century authors, and they form the bulk of my reading and influences, along with some post-1950s authors working in those traditions. This includes early SF: HG Wells, Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lovecraft, and other horror writers. I don't imitate the classics, nor write pastiches, and I'm keenly aware of some of their shortcomings. The influence appears in my work mostly in the tendency for longer, winding sentences, an aspiration for reasonably lush description where appropriate, and a certain attention to structure.
I also adore Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, though they're not really SF. I enjoy Ray Bradbury's stories, some Philip K Dick, and Edogawa Ranpo. I have tried to read Asimov, Heinlein, and Frank Herbert and struggled to finish them; I just never went further into "newer" SF.
For privacy's sake, I'd rather not go into great detail on my idea, though it will sound rather bland and generic as a result. It concerns a sprawling, hyper advanced AI system and a high-level engineer at the company that designed it. In addition to being soft science fiction, the first half looks like a mystery, but this gradually transforms into horror by its end. The second half has some of these features but is more straightforward soft science fiction.
Structure is important to the idea, and it shares a lot with the noted influence of early SF, especially in how science fiction, mystery, and horror can overlap structurally and otherwise. The novel is basically two seamless novellas and will meet contemporary publishing's expectations on manuscript length, though on the shorter end (around 75,000 words). Wells and Stevenson are the biggest influences. While not hard science fiction, the story does play with some of the basic ideas behind AI, which I've worked with professionally. Aspects of philosophy and mysticism also appear, and I studied both in graduate school.
Does contemporary SF have room for this sort of novel? I don't mean to suggest the idea is anachronistic or disqualified solely by having more of a link to these older influences than recent works. Rather, I'm more wondering if SF has moved so far beyond writing with this sort of kinship to the classics that agents and editors would pass on it.
Also, I'm in no way trying to dodge the work of finding comparable recent books; I only want to ask those more knowledgeable in case this idea differs too wildly to have a shot at publication.
Sorry if this doesn't fit the sub.