Just got to thinking about this after those threads on The Expanse and Military Sci-Fi (which admittedly is probably the sub-genre least affected by this trend).
I know the case can be made for the existence of some conservative authors or sometimes conservative themes, of course they exist, but are they “swimming upstream” so-to-speak? Going against the flow of “the mainstream” of Sci-Fi?
I’m not looking for a list of conservative authors by the way, I want to hear if the people here think that Sci-Fi as a genre may or may not have an inherent bias towards the new, the previously unseen, and thus “progressive” ideas and ideologies. Not even necessarily to castigate Sci-Fi, merely to attempt to understand what’s happening.
The “Sad Puppies” folks probably have some insights on this subject but I don’t know much about them beyond their existence and their claim that the Sci-Fi book awards system has been subverted by leftist/progressive ideologues:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_Puppies
Sad Puppies activists accused the Hugo Awards "of giving awards on the basis of political correctness and favoring authors and artists who aren't straight, white and male".
I do see the ideas of sci-if and “progressivism” as connected, but I’m not sure if that’s an inherent aspect of the genre, or if that is perhaps a cultural relic. I lean towards the idea that it is likely largely cultural (i.e. well respected sci-fi authors of old put “culturally progressive” themes in their books about Scientific “progress”, and that has carried on to this day) but I’m interested in where everyone else falls on the subject.
No more than say, technology is. Or sharing.
The left seeks to appropriate as many normal things into their wicked doctrine as they can in order to appear more palatable to normies.
The truth is that nothing is "inherently" progressive save wickedness and sin, always progressing towards the same old ends of chaos, depravity and evil. That's what their "progress" means.
That’s an interesting point....
Sci-fi has massive overlap with “technology”, and most any story about technology will be about the progress seen in that field. The subject of this thread perhaps comes into play when the author then seeks to apply this notion of “progress” to other things in their story, such as gender/race relations or economics or whatever.
But also, we don’t tend to write stories about just technologies, so authors tend to “spill-over” their notions of “technological progress” into ones of “societal progress” just by dint of writing their story (seemingly - they can’t all be deranged ideologues can they? Lol)
That's because the term progress is yrt another appropriation of the left.
Evil views itself as inevitable.
We’re certainly marching towards a cliff.
How do you deal with the reality that everyone sees themselves as “the Good guy, fighting Evil”?
Because that statement isn't true, simply put. It's Hollywood nonsense, just like that old, remarkably stupid equivocation of one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Or that hate leads to the dark side.
Take a good long look at the left, past and present, and tell me that they not only don't know they're the bad guys, but that they don't revel in it.
Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.
Sadly, most are.