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.
Lefties/progressives mostly believe that crime/murder/etc. only happens because people are poor and bad things happen to poor people because life sucks when you're poor. They also believe all races are perfectly equal (in capability/potential) as well as both sexes being perfectly equal (which is so obviously untrue re: women's sports vs. men's sports; but I digress).
Most artists are lefties and yeah they rig the scales nowadays to block out right wing artists; but I think that right wingers/conservatives are so much more likely to get a stable job and live a simple/stable life that it explains why we almost never see right wing/conservative artists. Thus; in a sci-fi story the lefty writer always assumes/portrays everyone as equals getting along in perfect harmony. They think that since no one is poor; that there will not be any more crime or racial hatred or anything like that.
It is their ideology being put forward as though it succeeded and they won. "See! Once we get to post scarcity everything will be fine! Surely black people won't continue to kill white people at a rate 10x higher than the reverse once we fix poverty!"
I didn't answer your question; but I wanted to point this out because of how annoying it is to me. Oh yeah people will become perfectly equal and harmonious once poverty is eliminated. Once we implement your dumbass space communism then all our problems will melt away, right.