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Episode 160 -- Science Fiction Fandom II: The Wrath of Con (Patreon)

Published:
2026-10-13 03:28:41
Edited:
2026-10-20 05:41:46
Imported:

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Content

Continuing NerdTober, Moira and Adrian continue their deep dive into science fiction fandom. After spending Episode I with the inner workings of right wing fandom (also pod racing), they now delve into the kinds of fan objects right wing fans congregate around. What specific authors, specific subgenres, specific tropes seem to inspire right wing fans (sometime deliberately, sometimes through no fault of their own)? What do right-wingers come to science fiction for?

NOTE: A lot of you commented on our discussion of the writer Marion Zimmer Bradley and that crucial details were missing from it. We decided to re-edit that part of the episode, and will likely talk about her in a future episode. Thank you for your feedback!

Comments

Nana Porter-Honicky

I didn’t realize you guys had done an episode with Jordan Carroll. I love his work! Certainly listening to that episode after this one.

sistertotherain9

The point about the sexism in nerd spaces being a reflection of existing sexism made me think about my own attempts to join nerd culture and how much I was initially willing to overlook just to belong to a group of people who had similar interests. There's an award-winning book by Jo Walton, Amoung Others. It's more ambiguous fantasy than it is scifi, but the protagnist is a big fan of scifi and joins a science fiction fan club. I don't know that it's a good book, or that I liked it, but I was very struck by the way the protagonist deals with a lot of the inherent misogyny of the authors she's a fan of. She reasons her way out of being upset by an attempted sexual assault by her estranged father with ideas cribbed from Hienlien, IIRC. But the reason she's so willing to embrace and use this particular form of misogyny is because she's already familiar with and fighting against a more mainstream misogyny. She does not want to get married and have children, and her fellow scifi fans at least don't believe this is her biological destiny. It parallels how she dismisses the attempted sexual assault by her father because she's already very familiar with the different and prolonged abuse of her mother. I don't know if this was the author's intention, but I was left with the impression that for women who get into nerd spaces it's often a choice between two kinds of misogyny and you might as well go for the one that at least has dragons and rockets.

Nina V~

i think i accidentally deleted my comment due to being stoned, but marion zimmer bradley has also been credibly accused of sexually abusing children

Nina V~

either it was that or the link i tried to add with my sources for that

Nina V~

the fantastic nerd podcast "this week in fandom history" did an episode on mzb and breen with very thorough sources

In Bed With the Right

It was "auto-moderated" for some reason? I restored it. Might have been because of the link, but not sure!

Derick Gadd

I was waiting for the half hour Warhammer 40k rant which never came the entire time 😭

ニコニコする

Having been to a bunch of gaming conventions, I have to say, unless the conventions in the 70s and 80s were more restrictive, meeting someone at a con doesn’t mean they were necessarily of age. I definitely went to my first few cons as a teenager and there were perpetually rumors, credible accusations, and so forth.

Charlotte

Oh, please do the HP Lovecraft episode! Lovecraftian horror is a popular setting for boardgames, because it's recognisable, but public domain, so cash-strapped boardgame publishers don't have to pay licensing fees. Arkham Horror The Card Game is one of my favourite games. It's a really compelling adaptation of the genre to me - the publisher, Fantasy Flight Games have sort of made their own version of a lovecraftian setting, but woke (affectionate), with a very diverse set of characters, which I love. Yes, I want to play the feisty red-haired female aviator (in practical clothing!) and the black trans postal carrier stopping the apocalypse. Of course that doesn't fix the racism and various other -isms inherent to the source material, but I think in terms of writing in the game they do a good job of leaning the other way.

Helen McCallum

Thanks Nina, I just came here to post about MZB. How the books of my childhood were ruined.

Charlotte

Don't get me wrong - I understand anyone who thinks this is ultimately whitewashing Lovecraft's legacy. I certainly think there's lots to be critical about! But the way they started out essentially making a straight-up pulp game with all the usual stereotypes (many of the early characters are very stereotypical) and then went "oh no" and tried to fix the issues (including excising ableist language about mental illness) is interesting!

Helen McCallum

I was 14 at my first one and men thought I was fair game because conventions.

Enname

Her daughter wrote rather extensively about her abuse, if the article is still up.

Nina V~

yeah, i'm pretty sure that is the first link in the sources cited in the post i linked to. it's just that i couldn't remember off the top of my head how extensive it was

Ben Schwabe

Oh I think the reactionaries would definitely call The Expanse "woke": Main characters include multiple women of color, Holden (our hero) is a real goody-two-shoes guy who has feelings a lot instead of being a stoic badass, and there's a lot of class conflict. It's been a while, but isn't that scene from To Sail Beyond the Sunset also in Time Enough for Love but from the dad's perspective? And the dad is actually immortal time travelling author stand-in Lazerous Long? He does multiple grooming fantasies, has sex with his mom, and the novel concludes with him having a threesome with his nubile twin daughters who are gender swapped clones of him.

Tobias Heal

Jesus, I knew Heinlein could get gross, but that's a whole other level from what I was expecting. I've never actually got round to reading any of his work but I've considered it a few times, because he clearly seems to have been quite a competent author, but every time I do, I learn some new gross and unpleasant thing that he believed/wrote about at length and it puts me off.

Charlotte

Oh uhhh yeah, there are plenty of credible abuse allegations against Marion Zimmer-Bradley herself. I was going to recommend the "This week in fandom history" episode on the subject, but I see someone else has already linked it.

audioboy

Pedophilia can be found in most male subgroups -- but sci fi pedos might be the premier group of 🤓☝️ "acktuallyyy, it's not pedophilia if they're teenagers..."

Tobias Heal

That's definitely true about the Expanse, and I'd also point out that in almost every book, either the primary or secondary antagonist is a man convinced that the universe has marked him out as special and the inhuman actions in which he engages are justified for the good of humanity, which he gets to decide, regardless of what everyone else thinks

Cate Kneale

HP Lovecraft, "is this just about Italians?" made me laugh and The Wrath of Con is a beautiful pun.

Ben Schwabe

Absolutely. And our current AI bros are looking at what Protogen did with the protomolecule and thinking "yeah. Like that. Exactly."

trashd

omg **pleaseee** do Lovecraft!

Mercymorn, the Saint of Joy

If you ever do a lovecraft episode, I’d love to also hear your thoughts about the Lovecraft Country tv show, though that comes with a Jonathan Majors asterisk in addition to its intrinsic issues,

Tobias Heal

"At last, we have created the torment nexus!"

SLP

Haven’t listened yet, but already grinning because of The Wrath of Con! Nicely done 👍

Maud McInerney

For anyone not a Sci fi person— it seems essential to remind you that it’s not all like this. I teach an entire course on SF that is basically all fantastic progressive stuff (LeGuin, Butler, etc.) also it was so much fun to watch those guys’ heads explode when N.K. Jemisin won the Hugo… 3 years in a row. Read her if you haven’t. Amazing.

Laura

I loved these episodes! I will admit that I was surprised Neal Stephenson wasn’t brought up, especially wrt libertarianism in hard science.

A Shade In Shades

I'd also plug the RPG Lovecraftesque as an interesting take on cosmic horror trying to avoid the racist baggage. Also includes some great essays on this subject.

Kriston

Gosh these episodes are "hard" for me, haha. I'm a huge sci fi and fantasy dork, but I guess I've always been completely immersed in the "woke" fandom. I'm a huge Trek fan because I believe that a future where capitalism doesn't exist (as one example) is something to strive for. The super conservative Trek fans have always baffled me, because they seemed to ya'know, miss the point. Like, I know these douche canoes exist out there, I guess I've just crafted my environment to almost completely exclude them, so they barely exist in my simple brain.

WGM

Misread the episode description and spent the whole episode excited to hear Adrian explaining podracing

Ren

One angle that is beyond the scope of what Adrian has talked about in this two-parter is the difference between affirmational fandom vs. transformative fandom (all credit to obsession_inc). Affirmational fandom tends to be male-dominated, focuses on arcane knowledge and gate-keeping, and obsessed with getting things "right." Transformative fandom is female- and queer-dominated, sees a canon as the launching-off point for exploration, and is more interested in differing readings of the text (there's a reason that the idea of "meta" essays come out of transformative fandom). And on a practical level, transformative fans are writing fanfiction and meta, creating fanart and fanvids, imagining original characters operating within the universe of the canon, and doing a lot of "what if"-ing. There are cis guys in these spaces, absolutely, but they are a minority, sometimes (depending on the online platform and the nature of the fandom) such a minority that it's honestly shocking when you encounter one. These kinds of fans were making Kirk/Spock zines in the 70s and in the 90s and 2000s hung out more on Yahoo mailing lists, Livejournal and other journaling platforms, fanfiction sites, and then later in spaces like Tumblr. They created the Archive of Our Own. Affirmative fandom absolutely used to dominate real-world things like comics stores/bookstores, most of the bigger conventions, message boards, and then later Reddit (and maybe Twitter? I don't know, I've never been a Twitter user). There are always women in these spaces, too, but there are way fewer of them, and imo it's because they're alienated by the more toxic aspects of that masculine subculture. I actually started out in an affirmational fandom circa 2000 (the Star Wars EU novels) but then found the transformative fans hanging out on the fanfiction boards and realized that was my niche. I didn't care what the dudes in the affirmational side of things were doing nearly as much as I cared about what the women and genderqueer people were doing over in the other spaces. I moved over into Livejournal and other places, into completely different fandoms, and I've now been in transformative fandom for over two decades, to the point where when I think "fandom," I think transformative fandom and often forget that affirmational fandom is a thing.

Ren

Knowing Noted Weirdo (affectionate) Jo Walton, I think that was entirely intentional. It’s a weird book but I love it.

sistertotherain9

Whe I say that I don't know if it's a good book or if I like it, I mean that there was just too much in it that resonated with me. So I don't trust my own judgement on it. I've borrowed it from Libby this morning to reread.

Ren

That absolutely makes sense. There’s a number of books I am unable to be objective about.

Lucie Grant

"they're the minions" sent me into hysterics

Zach

So many interesting threads in this episode. I have been thinking about how invisible the political valence of some of these books can be, especially if read while younger. The counter-culture elements of _Stranger in a Strange Land_ was definitely more salient to me than libertarian bits when I read it at 13 (although _Starship Troopers_ was hard to miss). [and no real excuse for the _The Weapon Shops of Isher_] Reading Norman Spinrad's _The Iron Dream_ (a scifi book as if written by an alternate hitler if he had moved to the US and become a pulp author), the most frightening thing was how unexceptional it was. It didn't feel out of place with other pulp sf/f, even as its protagonist was rising to power and wiping out "mutants." On the subject of sex at cons: There are also the semi-recent revelations that it was an open secret that Isaac Asimov serially harassed women at conventions: https://www.publicbooks.org/asimovs-empire-asimovs-wall/

roland00

SEX CULTS , messy poly people let me introduce cursed lore that I learned from The New Republic where Jeet Heer did a review of a Heinlein Book. This is about the second and third wife but notice who also had a sex cult with in a threesome who is a man > In this passage, Heer is describing Patterson’s book as it relates how Heinlein’s second marriage to liberal Leslyn gave way to his third marriage to conservative Virginia… >> https://newrepublic.com/article/118048/william-pattersons-robert-heinlein-biography-hagiography >>In 1944, Heinlein met Lieutenant Virginia Gerstenfeld, and after the war tried to bring her into his house as part of a ménage à trois. Gerstenfeld accepted but her stay with the Heinleins was brief and stormy. This wasn’t the first love triangle in the Heinlein residence (they had earlier been in a consensual threesome with L. Ron Hubbard), but Leslyn found Virginia threatening so the marriage collapsed in 1947. Heinlein and Gerstenfeld wed the following year, a marriage that would also be open. so yeah threesomes with the Church of Scientology founder before anyone was famous. Likewise third wife Virginia Gerstenfeld is married to Heinlein from 1947 till his death in 1988. Heinlein and Gerstenfeld start the sex cult book “stranger in a strange land” (1961, won the hugo in 1962) in 1948 after reading Kipling The Jungle Book. It is this 1961 book that gives us the term Grok which is another one of those horny, death, control, knowledge words per said text. Well Gerstenfeld convinced Heinlein not to publish stranger in a strange land earlier before 1961 for this will be the magnum opus. Said publication is also an edited version for the public and Gerstenfeld in 1991 after Heinlein death publishes the longer unedited version. *shivers* Also Heinlein is into Ayn Rand and that sex cult as well and easter eggs her sex cult group several times.

roland00

Note this is a weird man who was into incest and control including in the 1950s writing a story about an intersex person transing their gender. Except said person via time travel is their own dad and mom, child, and bartender and other people I forget. Playboy said we are not interested in said story in 1958 so Heinlein publishes it himself in 1959 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2527%E2%80%94All_You_Zombies%E2%80%94%2527 Said story is also time cops for supposedly this self creation via timeline manipulation is needed to create an ideal subject… via incest … for civilization allows non hierarchy and thus something something sacred timeline. Heinlein has like 4 stories involving trans characters or clones and thus is self c’est, and god why is there so much toxic gender / patriarchy with you can only generate a specific way that the libertarian author is into.

roland00

to add to this, I mentioned the Heinlein connection to L Ron Hubbard (the church of scientology guy) in a different comment. The connection is Hubbard and Heinlein were messy poly people before the church of scientology. Neil Gaiman is connected to Hubbard and Heinlein about two degrees removed. His (neil gaiman) parents were big wigs in the church of scientology in the 60s to 80, including the main people who covered up sex crimes. Well Neil Gaiman leaves Scientology in the early 80s yet uses his connections, talent, but covering up secrets to connect to the fantasy and sci fi writing industry including comic books. *ick* So yeah it felt off and disgusting that Gaiman is doing more cycles of abuse with other women and his own son. (these acquisition came out in 2024 and way more info in 2025.) • so yeah it does not feel great to learn both of MZB and Gaiman and how they have hurt people. I am alive today because these works of fiction helped me in dark times with abusive family, yet I do not recommend their works anymore for their is other fiction that can inspire.

roland00

Sidenote about The Expanse, the star trek author Melinda M. Snodgrass (the trial of data with whether he is sentient) found one of the two authors of the expanse due to shared writing groups and she suggested Ty Franck be George RR Martin IT guy and personal assistant during the book 2 to 3 era before Ty and Daniel Abraham became famous. Note Martin and Snodgrass were also 80s RPG players with Martin as Gamemaster and this became the wildcard universe their board game that became bigger. And Daniel Abraham ans Ty Frank friendship was originally around RPGs and how the expanse was going to be lore of s computer game.

Tobias Heal

@roland00 I remember reading about that, I reckon the fact that the world was originally designed to be the lore of a computer game is a big part of why the series managed to jump from book to screen so well

Karen Cox

Since you mentioned conventions, I should note that Isaac Asimov died of AIDS that he acquired from screwing every fan he could find.

Charley

Was just coming into the comments to say “Neil Gaiman”. He really thought it was OK to behave like he did, and he’s outraged that he’s been called out on it. And his bloody ex-wife colluded too, despite her claims of “feminism”. Ugh. Have you listened to the Tortoise media podcast “Master” on this? (It’s informative if you can forget that one of the hosts is Boris Johnson’s sister 😅🤦🏼‍♀️)

In Bed With the Right

Would you listen to an episode about right wing Trek fandom? It's something that I find baffling as well and would love to delve into!

Kriston

Yeah, for sure! It might be incredibly frustrating, but I'm always up for trying to learn/understand.

suvi_lilja

this episode was rad, i’d personally love to hear an episode solely focused on Le Guin’s writings, she was a powerhouse and a visionary for sure.

A Felt

I’m sorry to hear that, I also started attending conventions as a teen and immediately had older men hitting on me. It’s not hard to see why books with creepy libertarian takes on the age of consent would appeal to those kinds of fans

Juliana

One of the more problematic aspects of Haldeman's "Forever War" is the daily compulsory sex between male and female soldiers (in pairs that get assigned according to a roster). That is actually pretty close to the whole "state mandated girlfriend" idea, that incels like so much.

Kerrie Murphy

I would love an episode on the books of Ira Levin. You’d think you are on pretty safe ground after The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby and then This Perfect Day gets real rapey. Have left Sliver and A Kiss Before Dying sitting on my shelf a while before I can dive back in.

rock dove

PLEASE do a Lovecraft episode. I'm so sorry Moira but it would be so good

Juliana

Lovecraft also encouraged other writers to borrow his motifs and worldbuilding. Lovecraft's legacy thus became bigger than his own body of work. I don't think Lovecraft's popularity can be reduced to it being in the public domain.

Charlotte

This is true, of course! I've actually never read any actual Lovecraft, but several things by other authors in the same genre. For boardgames specifically, being free from licensing fees is relevant (there was also a deluge of games when Sherlock Holmes became public domain), but of course the overall popularity of the Lovecraftian genre is independent of that.

Jolanta Benal

Re the politics of sex. I suspect many kinky people, esp BDSM folks, bristle defensively at political analysis of sexuality bc we're used to analysis being a fig leaf for disparagement. I'm very familiar with the Entitled Cis Male Dom, and he's all yours, but yeah, I want the rest of us left TF alone. We have enough to cope with from the Christian right.

Jules Graybill

Oh no, at 39:30 I think you mentioned David Brin when you meant Larry Niven. Very different authors!

Abigail Agresta

Lovecraft episode! In bed with the fish people!

Maud McInerney

Also… Mists of Avalon is not good.

Nina V~

i was ABSOLUTELY thinking of gaiman during the breen story 🤮

Astraea

Okay, I haven't finished the episode, but I just have to say: "Science fiction used to just be about the cool future-tech and was never about heavy-handed moral messaging" is about the most brain-dead take you could possibly come up with. Mary Shelley (Frankenstein, widely considered the first modern-ish sci-fi novel) damn well had a message. HG Wells had a message. "A Canticle for Liebowitz" is nothing but moral messaging for 300 pages. Guys. Are you sure you read these books? Are you *REALLY* sure??

Jenalyn Myggland

Subverts the tyranny of chronological time. SUBVERTS THE TYRANNY OF CHRONOLOGICAL TIME! First, thank you Moira for flagging in real time, second, I’m going to need a bonus episode diving into that nugget! Thinking you could bury that in the last 3 minutes and avoid further analysis.

Jennifer Stair

Star Trek is generally considered a pretty forward thinking franchise, but the whole old(er) man creeping on basically-teenagers (or very much younger adult women) thing feels like something I often want to call out. "Gene's Vision" was very sex-positive... To the point that it was willing to ignore a lot of creepy age stuff in both the original series and Next Generation particularly.

natty

Unfortunately for me, I read the title as “Wrath of Cohn” and was so excited for tie-in with my bb boi Roy.

生きてるだけで、りん

i'm not sure such split is so distinct. though can't claim much direct fandom knowledge, but as an internet observer it seems like there's quite a lot of "male-dominated transformative fandom", and the difference is maybe more one of subject matter/tone/approach, e.g. "death battle", "space battles forum" and such dominating among mashups, and "what if" scenarios being things like "what if this star wars guy was sent back in time and had to deal with this historical scenario" or "what if x trained the villain instead of y? would he still be a bad guy?

生きてるだけで、りん

if the word "mansplaining" ever could be used legitimately, would think he's the most appropriate target 😅

Astraea

These guys DEFINITELY took all the wrong lessons away from Brave New World.

Casey Lau

Loved these science fiction episodes! And I say this as a sci-fi fan.

Allen

Adrian discussing mid-20th century creep libertarian sci-fi authors — Ayn Rand technically counts here, no? EDIT: and of course Frank Herbert

Allen

Another deceased right-wing sci-fi crank with atrocious gender politics: Michael Crichton

Astraea

Reading Children of Dune is an exercise in watching an author lose his ever-loving mind in real time....

Laura

I personally love his explanation dense writing and I think it’s equally distributed among the genders of characters so I wouldn’t call it mansplaining but I get it’s not for everyone!

Ren

You’ve got a point about the what-if, but I would say that even that is different. There’s a level of critique in transformative fandom that isn’t allowed in affirmational spaces—the text or creator is always “right.” If you look up transformative fandom on fanlore.org, there’s links to the original essay that makes the argument in a more nuanced way than I can do here. But male-dominated fannish spaces are absolutely not creating, say, fanfic in the way female-dominated ones do.

Phoebe Evans

Wanted to tell you how very much I enjoyed this episode. The articulation, the outrage, the snark. All immensely satisfying, thank you so much.

Leslie Wines

Not OP but can I second the motion?

Bruce

I'm sure it would be wizard!

Bruce

It should be a double Lovecraft/Warhammer episode to really ensure Moira's descent into madness.

Olivia

I would love an episode about the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I’m a bookseller, so I think a lot about recommending books and the forces behind what’s popular. I was really excited to read it because so many of my fellow booksellers (whose taste I admire) genuinely loved it; imagine my disappointment when I found it not only badly written, but also full of misogyny, ableism, and rape jokes. It really is a rich text (derogatory) and I think it reflects something very unnerving about the present moment. P.S. DCC fans, please don’t come for me, I don’t want to argue

Avocado Mistress

I'm here for the Lovecraft ep, but also an ep on James M Tiptree, Jr would be so awesome!!! Joanna Russ and her disruption of the Canon is also an incredible gender story. Loved this episode as a sci-fi reader who abandoned the genre for a while and have now returned to discover the glorious wokeness.

Timothy Scott Johnson

This is not a critique of Adrian's knowledge at all, but it seems pretty likely to me that the fears of demographic change (and all that other crap) are connected to decolonization and the lack of white control over the rest of the world.

Laurelsbooks6

I left a comment yesterday, and deleted by mistake, I think. Will try again: I liked these episodes, but I wish there had been a mention of how uncertain we were of the outcome of the 2015 Hugo awards: we *did not know* if the SFF community would reject the misogyny and racism of the Rabid Puppies & the gamification of the awards. But that awards ceremony became increasingly joyful, as the hosts announced “no award” in one category after the next, after the next.

Miranda Rose

Science fiction! Double feature!

DarthZipper

Hot take: "Star Trek" has conservative fans because while it espouses progressive ideals of egalitarianism, abolition of social hierarchies like racism, classism, sexism, etc -- most of that stuff is happening offscreen back on Earth or other paradisical Federation planets we rarely see. Most of the actual screen time is spent with characters in an intensely hierarchical setting: a space navy where almost everyone is wearing a uniform, has a rank, and is part of a chain of command. "Star Trek" is at its core a fantasy of benevolent space colonialism, and lots of episodes are about the space navy helping Earth colonies out on the frontier, defending against foreign navies (Klingons, Romulans, etc). On top of THAT, there's a lot of biological essentialist rhetoric about various alien species (Klingons as being natural warlike, Romulans as treacherous, Jem'Hadar as biologically compelled to violence). And on top of THAT, some of the alien species are racially-coded, particularly the Klingons. And all that's setting aside the pervasive sexual objectification of women and homophobia from "Star Trek" productions made pre-2016. I love "Star Trek," but honestly I can see what its right-wing fans enjoy about it. It's not quite as progressive as it thinks it is.

Kriston

Nothing you've said is wrong, for sure. I guess I feel like those things only make it seem conservative if you don't stop to think about the fact that they were created by humans in, ya'know, the current timeline. I suppose that *is* an easier way to watch. And it could be the difference between my circle of Trekkies and theirs.

PizzaSocks

I would really love to hear your take on Octavia Butler bc I often really like her work for its brutal exposition of horrible things but one of the ways she does that is with deeply uncomfortable sex, especially with child(like) beings and incest and sex that can’t be consensual

Ryan E

I'll be honest I did not like the descriptions of what Hard Sci-fi is relative to the rest of sci-fi. In fact, Adrian you never actually really define the core features of hard Sci-Fi before going into what I think is kind of an unfair attack on it. Hard Sci-Fi is just stories that focus on realism of the physics involved so that, while elements may be speculative, it COULD take place in our world. Softer Sci-Fi essentially uses some forms of magic as plot elements. There's rooms for both types, in fact a spectrum of them, in Sci-fi. But I thought it was very unfair to say Hard Sci-Fi is just a vehicle for genocidal thought puzzles, or is always marginal, or is a way to make it more adult and just poo poo kids that are into Sci-Fi.

Ryan E

Holden literally has 7 parents who live in a farm commune and all live together polyamorously and equally contributed to his genetic makeup.... I'm not sure how you get more outside the bounds of a traditional family than that.

Ryan E

I think that's more a function of sci-fi and speculative fiction writing in general. In speculative fiction, the stakes are typically higher than in typical fiction and the main character gets to make decisions that could change the world. And because its in a compelling narrative form, these decisions aren't usually made by committee like they would in our real world.

Mary

the term didn't explicitly come up, but a lot of Sci Fi is also explicitly or unthinkingly pro colonization. there are so many stories about space exploration or colonizing new worlds. sometimes humans find worlds with less advanced life and the colonization is framed as bringing progress to those people (colonization is helping out those savages). or the original inhabitants attack the explorers and have to be killed now because they didn't even give the humans a chance so clearly they are just unintelligent and dangerous. or sometimes the humans find uninhabited worlds, which can bolster the myth that the Americas were mostly empty and we didn't genocide full societies during the "age of exploration" or westward expansion. a lot of it is also about the fear of the violence we have done to others being done to us, via alien invasion. those stories often go into great replacement fears (like was discussed in the episode) or the humans beat the invaders which can communicate something like "colonization wouldn't happen to us, we're smarter/stronger/braver than that, therefore people who have been colonized historically are lesser." critically engaging in those storylines can be labeled as political and unthinkingly retelling them is not.

Astraea

I thought Adrian did a very good job of describing Hard Sci-Fi almost exactly as you did: something that takes the physics seriously, where the technical details matter, in a way that is a pretty fair reflection of how actual space travel (or genetic engineering, etc) works in the real world. He then *later* goes on to describe how it became attractive to the genocide-curious and how it came to be seen as "more serious" than soft scifi/soft scifi came to be seen as done kind of dumbing down or perversion of the genre. But those are two different steps, and I think that was a key point in the discussion: this thing called hard scifi exists, and in a vacuum it isn't necessarily racist/sexist/colonial/etc, but it sure has gotten the reputation for being that way and here's why. I'd also seriously disagree with your characterization of soft scifi as using "some forms of magic." Soft sci-fi is just sci-fi whose main focus is something other than the technology itself/whose main focus is the social impact of a technology, event, etc. That's always been my personal definition, anyway, and it's always served me well. For example, I'd say that Isaac Asimov's "Nightfall" is either soft sci-fi or skirts the line of it. Yes, there are a few long-ish discussions of orbital dynamics, but the story is mostly about how a society that has literally never had full darkness and seen the stars reacts to suddenly experiencing full darkness and seeing the stars.

sistertotherain9

I tried reading those books and couldn't stand them. I was a teenager and didn't know the term "gender essentialism," but there was something so offputting about how women's social and religious power was all about having sex with men, getting pregnant, and giving birth, all things I wasn't particularly interested in and was already getting preached about by the Evangelical Christians I lived around.

chuckboy

I almost skipped this series because it did not sound interesting at all (sorry Adrian) but I’m glad I didn’t because your analysis was fascinating

Robin

I will note part of the plot in Forever War is the protagonist being The Last Straight

C. D. Tavenor

Came here to make this comment. Later in the series there's also main characters in massive eight person polycules. The Expanse is definitely "woke" in all the right ways