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.
TLDR, no.
People trying to paint sci-fi as 'inherently progressive' are basically taking all the 60s and 70s reactionaries as 'all' of science fiction, while ignoring people who came before and afterwards.
A popular example they love to cite is 'Star Trek' for a multitude of reasons, but they always do it from a superficial twitter/tumbler understanding of the series, as I doubt any of them have actually sat down and, y'know, watched the original series.
One scene as an example that always sticks in my head was the one that introduced Khan in 'Space Seed', where the various characters are looking at the history of the eugenics wars, and Scotty remarked about how Khan was 'one of the good ones', where another character then turned around basically pointed out 'But he was still a fascist, genetic supremacist'. None of it done emotionally, all done in fair debate. Can you imagine any modern sci-fi show pulling off something like this? Giving an extreme side it's own fair soap box? Hell, Khan himself was smooth, charismatic, urbane, sophisticated - yet still clearly arrogant and confident in his own superiority.
People playing the 'sci-fi inherently progressive' are basically holding up a distorted fun-house mirror to science fiction as a whole and going 'See? SEE!?' to try and convince you that the mirror is the real thing.
And when you do the research and point out examples they'll just dismiss it as 'someone's triggered', because they lack the autism most fans of sci-fi tend to posess. It's just another cudgel fake fans/NPCs use in their arsenal to demoralize and break down their opponent.
Debating them is pointless. Just quote Heinlein and Asimov at them till they either freak out or shut up.
I’ve seen the trannies try to claim Heinlein over All.You.Zombies., I think they’re wrong and it’s obviously an interesting analysis of the “Grandfather Paradox”, but I suppose the point being that for as much as one can say “this is true, full stop, end of discussion” - there will always be people who disagree, I don’t think their mere (and pitiful) existence should shut down nuanced discussion though. Personally I do think Trek has always been progressive, it’s just that “progressive” in ‘66 meant something quite distant to “progressive” in ‘23. Distant, but the same path.
Can't say much to tranny delusions.
Heinlein was always very much a writer's writer - he wrote whatever the fuck he wanted and didn't really care how others would take it, and didn't really limit himself.
Even if he did go a little, uh, weird in his old age after his wife died.