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.
I think that most publishing, discourse around writing and literature, and culture around books in general has been largely left-captured for quite a while. I don't think it's inherently challenging to write right-wing sci-fi, or fantasy, or anything else, but I don't think you typically see these things for the same reason that you don't typically see flourishing animal life inside a toxic spill site.
One thing I saw brought up recently elsewhere was that the right's typical focus on trades and small business and leaving academics alone may be a sensible reaction to the left's dominance of these fields, but that doesn't mean it doesn't negatively impact the right's ability to marshal an intellectual elite, a body of scholarship, or even mainstream cultural contributions. It's accurate to say that the left has taken over all forms of entertainment media and academia, but it's also not inaccurate to criticize the right for largely neglecting to even try to take any of it back.