I wonder that as well. And the same for movies, games, etc.
I think in order to "play it safe" against the 1% of people who cry over the dumbest shit, but who happen to screech the loudest, creators make everything about someone's feelings, edge case stuff you hardly see represented in day to day. You weave that web enough and you end up with the "creative" output of something like Gemini lol.
Huh? I would imagine that content that is about people’s feelings and the things those feelings are about, would be more likely to offend? Who gets offended by content about like, “How navigation would be different if space were like X?” or, “How would sheet music for music in a world with two time dimension look? Might we have music where along one direction the frequency is increasing in magnitude, but decreasing along another, played to depict a scene in which a pursuer gets closer to a target along one direction of time but further along the other?” ?
(Though, I’m not sure if two time dimensions exactly makes sense, because like, R\{0} has two connected components, which seems connected to the distinction between the past and the future, while R^2\{0} is connected (though not simply-connected) , so I’m not sure if the distinction between past and future, can still be made? Maybe if instead of a 0-dimensional point we have a 1-dimensional curve? )
As I imagine it, for the most part, the further something is from human experience, the less it would tend to remind people of whatever things in life they find objectionable.
Because in trying to tell that kind of interesting story today, the creators would force the current day politics and other bullshit into it and make that the front and center instead of the cool math or science stuff.
If even simple children's stories can't escape it with the remakes, forget it when it comes to something interesting.
I'm always happy when there are exceptions to this of course, but it is quite rare. One of my goals if I ever make it to the 9 figure club is to start a media company based outside the US where we can make great content about interesting concepts like this, without injecting politics into it or having to work with people who inject nonsense into everything. (on a side note, this is why I enjoy working with E. Euro and S. American engineers - they just focus on working and problem solving, not feelings and shit based on half truths they made up from taking drugs or whatever)
Anyway I was just responding to why stuff like that isn't made anymore. That's my opinion.
> Because in trying to tell that kind of interesting story today, the creators would force the current day politics and other bullshit into it and make that the front and center instead of the cool math or science stuff.
That's always been the case. If you look at Star Trek, the TOS Klingons were a very thinly veiled reference to the Soviet Union, the Federation was the USA (and in some cases not even thinly veiled, they had an episode where Kirk was "yo, sounds like you're quoting the constitution"); the whole of The Undiscovered Country was chock full of similarly themed memes with Praxis being Chernobyl, "Shakespeare is best in the original Klingon" was the kind of thing that the Soviet Union was famous for doing[0] with all the culture they liked, and with Rura Penthe being a very obvious reference to a Siberian Gulag.
TNG comes around, over a thousand people on the ship, statistically speaking 50 or so are probably gay… none are mentioned because that was just before "don't ask, don't tell" was introduced, which itself was a mild improvement on "we will discharge you for this". Even the attempt at an LGBT episode (the planet which had eliminated gender and brainwashed anyone who still had one) only got the T, and not the LGB parts.
DS9's handling of the Bajorans feels to me like it was riffing on then-current US attitudes towards the Mujahideen (who were still broadly seen as a positive because they had kicked the Soviets out of Afghanistan and 9/11 had not yet happened) and the Provisional IRA (who were, when the show began, still engaged in armed conflict with the government of the UK).
Enterprise's Archer felt like Bush Jr, and the Xindi arc felt like it was done as a reference to the 9/11 attacks (I don't know how much of a delay there is between scriptwriters experiencing real life and the result hitting the airwaves).
Every show you've ever seen has something like this, just to get distributed. But these days, we've got more options for distribution, so you're not limited to your own country's Overton Window for "what counts as art and not filth that corrupts the minds of our youth", so you can much more easily access things that those around you would revile you for — be that smoking tobacco or marijuana, or depicting casual consumption of pork or beef like those aren't حَرَام or अघ्न्या (in Islamic and Hindu cultures respectively), or which you are upset more about out of nipples and guns.
Read early Philip K Dick. Lots of female homemakers and male breadwinners, and other 50s mores. Flying robot taxis, but the lady of the house wears a pinafore. It hasn't aged well.
Culture warriors are people with a dogmatic attitude to the social realm (and who shout about it - but that's redundant; all dogmatics are hegemonists).
SF is fundamentally iconoclastic.
What is a culture warrior doing reading SF, if you don't mind explaining?
I think in order to "play it safe" against the 1% of people who cry over the dumbest shit, but who happen to screech the loudest, creators make everything about someone's feelings, edge case stuff you hardly see represented in day to day. You weave that web enough and you end up with the "creative" output of something like Gemini lol.