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.
What are some examples of sci-fi untainted by progressivism? I see wiki listing the “oldest” examples of sci-fi being things like ”the epic of Gilgamesh”, ”1001 Arabian Nights” and “the Canterbury Tales” - are you going that far back?
I'd say we can go, at a minimum, back to Jules Verne (sure, people call him Steampunk today, but he was science fiction at his time). Maybe I'm forgetting things, but I can't recall anything remotely progressive in most of his works. Heck, "Around the World in 80 Days" is almost a minor celebration of the British Empire having conquered most of the world, and you could make the argument that Captain Nemo an early view of someone going Sovereign Citizen.
A counterpoint would be Captain Nemo from 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea being a utopian revolutionary figure, which falls into the left's wheelhouse. As is usual with more complex characters, they defy reductive explanations.
How the hell are those "sci-fi?" Or is whoever wrote that wiki simply lumping fantasy and sci-fi together?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_fiction
Some interesting points made - I should have linked the wiki if I was going to mention it.
There are heaps. For films: Star Wars (original trilogy). Blade Runner. The Matrix (this could be interpreted as Gnostic which is connected to Progressivism but still). Robocop. Predator. Solaris. Ghostbusters. Outland. Demolition Man. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Village of the Damned (original). Jurassic Park (original). The Rover. Dead End Drive-in. Under the Silver Lake. etc
Star Wars = interracial (I’m including Wookiees and such) band of plucky revolutionaries overturn evil Empire clearly emblematic of the Nazis
Blade Runner = non-humans (might?!?) have human rights
The Matrix = were being brainwashed into compliant slaves by corporations maaaaaan
A bunch of good 80s action movies - yeah no doubt, are they right wing / conservative though? I’d say they’re more apolitical and even if we looked at them in depth we could probably find woke-for-its-time notions, while the films might not be dominated by them, thankfully
It seems like it's you that's trying to shoehorn progressive messages into things. Where in The Matrix are the machines referred to as a corporation? Morpheus himself even said we created AI and all of humanity was united and marveling at their own brilliance. Sounds like AI ushered in communism then destroyed us.
I’m just saying dude, one can see certain themes that were, for their time, “progressive” in all these works. The secretary in Ghostbusters, and adding Ernie in 2 come to mind as other examples of “woke-for-their-time”
I think “corporate/Military Industrial Complex america” is one of a few valid interpretations behind “the machine empire”, the agents have a clear “men-in-black”/gmen vibe, while obviously the film was also saying a lot of other things too though.
And that’s without even considering the people behind these works. Lucas is a classical lefty, the Whack-owskis are...well...whatever tf they are these days, and so on.
And besides(!!), from the very beginning I’ve never denied the existence of conservative themes or authors/creatives in Sci-Fi, I simply verbalized the notion that they were “swimming against the current” in the genre, the whole point being to discuss that phenomenon, and not necessarily counter examples (unless you thought the notion was so wrong it should be refuted, but I don’t think anyone can disagree that there is a general leftist slant in the average piece of sci-fi, I just wanted to get at why/what’s going on). I even said I don’t think it’s inherent, the title is mainly a framing for the conversation (though admittedly a far from perfect framing)
The entire conflict driver of that film is that the replicants don't have human rights, because they aren't human. If they did, then the job of Blade Runner literally wouldn't exist. Did you even watch the film?
Yeah, did you? The main character, who you’ve spent the entire film empathizing with, who seemed human this entire time, and spent the entire movie explicitly thinking he was human, turns out to (maybe?!?!) be one of the “non-humans”. Or at a minimum, he fell in love with one. Classic “it could happen to you” progressive morality play.
Just because something was a cool 80s action movie doesn’t preclude it from containing progressivist notions. Even Die Hard, the “badass” spends the whole movie groveling for his wife to love him again and showing how much pain he’s in, regardless of how much one likes the film, those were progressive notions, woke-for-their-time, certainly for an action hero movie.
As I stated in another comment above, you're only thinking of the utopian side. There's plenty of dystopian sci fi.
Wouldn’t you agree that often dystopian sci-fi is/can still be used to promote “progressive” ideology? Just for example, the dystopia often seen in Cyberpunk media could be “fixed” by communist wealth redistribution, according to some character/the author
I don’t think dystopia is mutually exclusive with “progressivist”
So even in their imagination, real communism has never been tried? That's telling.
The original Starship Troopers, from what I understand is one such example. There's a lot of other examples you can find from the 60's to the 80's, but you often have to look more into novels than TV shows or film.