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.
Obviously not, sci-fi existed before the mental illness known as Progressivism even existed. There just tends to be some overlap there because sci-fi sometimes deals with utopian societies and that intersects with the utopian delusions that drive Progressivism.
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.