[MarkusQ]

I would really like to be able to read something and find out that it's about whatever it said it was going to be about, and not bait to trick me into hearing about the author's 1) politics, 2) sexuality, 3) AI use or 4) investment grift.

[mosura]

The fact this reflects the subject matter in question is an irony surely lost on the author as well.

Political tedium aside a major factor in the decline of scifi is we live in the future, only it is not the future people were being excited about. As many creatives put it they wanted machines to do the chores and them to do the art, not the other way around.

[throwaway9980]

Look on the bright side, you've lived to see 2026 where these four things have collapsed into each other. Like a rainbow refracted into pure white light.

[crooked-v]

>scifi

>I don't want to hear about politics or sexuality

How actually familiar are you with the genre?

[readthenotes1]

Perhaps instead, the complaint should be that the reader should not be lectured about politics or sexuality in a ham-handed self-righteous insertion completely irrelevant to the rest of the story.

[ahhhhnoooo]

Well there goes Orson Scott Card, Asimov, Heinlein, Orwell, etc.

The politics and sexuality were always in these stories. They were just more familiar, so they don't seem as self righteous. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a classic example of a story with sexuality and politics in old timey sci fi.

[readthenotes1]

I do not remember any of those books stopping for a several page lecture unrelated to any plot point.

Most of what I remember is the author using the action of the story to carry the point across.

The same is true of Star Trek ToS, and most of what I remember from deep space nine.

It is not that I am opposed to the ideas of flexing sexuality and politics in science fiction- quite the opposite. Take for instance, the culture series by Iain Banks. Fantastic work where If there is some lecturing done, it seems to fit smoothly into the flow of the work.

[rsynnott]

> They were just more familiar, so they don't seem as self righteous.

I mean, I think it's maybe just that a certain subset of the readership are now unhappy with any discussion of sexuality (I suspect that people like this simply didn't really read sci-fi in the past). In particular, look at Heinlein; a lot of his stuff would be very out there _today_ (the Moon is a Harsh Mistress is quite mild by Heinlein-weird-sex-stuff standards).

The complaint about politics is too silly to take seriously at all; sci-fi has _always_ been about politics, to the point where it is difficult to come up with non-YA examples of politics-free sci-fi.

[readthenotes1]

No, it's the poor quality of writing, using irrelevant lecture to try to push home a point as opposed to the story doing so seemingly naturally.

[komali2]

Just go read engineering documentation about the Apollo flights then. What you're describing has never been sci-fi - you're falling in that camp of people the article described that are demanding authors not write above a fifth grade level.

Scifi has always been an exploration of the human condition within certain circumstances created by fantastic technologies. The human condition is made of politics, sexuality, philosophy, ethics, identity...

[crooked-v]

You've just described a substantial part of Star Trek, before even considering the rest of the genre.

[bigstrat2003]

Actually no, he hasn't. Star Trek (back when it was good) worked because the writers were smart enough to trust the viewers to draw their own conclusions. They would set up a dilemma, let the characters give arguments on both sides, and then not openly take a side. Even when you could guess which side the writers were on, it almost never felt like they were lecturing you like a child.

I am perfectly happy for science fiction to offer commentary on social issues. That's one of the strengths of the genre! But to do that, you need to be subtle and lots of modern authors don't even try to be subtle any more. And as a result, their attempts at social commentary are absolutely insufferable to sit through.

[crooked-v]

Star Trek openly took sides from the start, unless you think the episode with the people who are half-black-half-white and the people who are half-white-half-black counts as "subtle".

[rsynnott]

[Insert Picard rambling for ten minutes about how horrible money was; this happened multiple times in TNG]

Nothing subtle about Star Trek's political stuff.

[readthenotes1]

ham-handed.

Deep Space 9 touched on similar themes without long lectures

[MarkusQ]

I was talking about the article, actually.