Well, I read quite a bit of SF and of the books mentioned in the OP, the Niven/Pournelle one is the only one where I had even heard of the authors, much less the book. I knew Terminator from the movies of course, but the books are not exactly the pinnacle of modern SF literature, are they?
I could think of other examples which agree with the OP, but then, I suspect that for every such book one could give a counter-example where the environmentalists are the good guys and/or where their worst fears have come true. So I’m not sure whether there’s really a ‘backlash’, or if it’s just a matter of SF being a very diverse field and just about every possible extrapolation of current trends having been experimented with at least once. How many examples do you need before you can speak of a ‘trend’?
When SF writers decide to write about politics, their natural inclination is to look at a current trend and play with it, extrapolate from it, take it to extremes. Environmentalism is fertile ground for such treatment because it offers plenty of opportunities for involving science, human conflict, large-scale consequences, commentaries on current events… In short, just about everything you want in a political SF novel. Good SF authors also tend to have a contrarian streak and like to, for example, take a group of people who would normally be the good guys and then cast them as the antagonists, or vice versa. Throw in a couple of real-life examples of overzealous environmentalist types standing in the way of science and progress, and a plot is born.
In short, I’m not sure that you really need to look for an explanation much deeper than “it’s a pretty obvious idea to come up with, really, if you think like an SF writer”.
What a straight line. [There are no smileys strong enough. )
I’ve read his views on a private message board. Along with Pournelle’s. Jerry Pournelle is to the right of Attila the Hun and Steve Stirling is to the right of Jerry Pournelle. IMO.
I have no idea how representative the libertarian faction in sf is. The libertarians I have among my friends have no actual political philosophy beyond “don’t tax me.” But your notion, BG, of the intellectual arrogance of sf libertarians supports my own observations of their opinions of themselves. Obviously, it is not shared by those outside their group.
Parenthetically, I was on a social science-oriented panel at the recent Worldcon. It was a very odd panel because two people were in concert with one another and the other three of us were totally puzzled by what they were saying and kept trying to introduce our understandings of the real world. It wasn’t until afterward, when I had time to think about it, that I realized that the two cohorts were both card-carrying members of the Analog Mafia. But the other three of us had actual social science degrees and training. There is a true intellectual split in the sf writing world.
Which is fine, because the reading world has similar splits and this ensures that there is compatible reading for all. It’s just that it’s as tough to remember out there in life as it is here on the Boards that the Other Side truly believes all the nonsense it is spouting.
I’m not enough of an SF fan to know if it’s a “trend,” but I can see why some authors, especially technophillic ones, would see environmentalists as nutcases.
Ever hear people from PETA speak? They don’t consider animals to be equal to humans. They consider them to be superior to humans. Many of the more extreme environmentalists seem to have a lot of self-loathing, and loathing against humanity in general. And as mentioned, many of them are rather technophobic, which automatically puts them at odds with the vast majority of Science Fiction writers.
Add it all up, and you have the perfect fodder for a group of well-meaning but hopelessly misguided antagonists.
For a view from the scientific environmentalist side, try David Brin, or Neal Stephenson, or John Brunner, or go back a few years to Frank Herbert. You can get a pretty balanced view from Kim Stanley Robinson also. Plenty of scientists have a recognition that technology and harmony with our environmrent are not mutually exclusive.
Explain then. Perhaps your definition of centrist is different than mine. Stirling is pro-gay rights, pro-choice, pro-feminist, for limited gun control and would be described in classic terms as a federalist. He does have views on the threat from radical Islam that some would consider extreme, but that in itself doesn’t make him right-wing. So what does in your view?
And then there is the literary glory that is Kim Stanley Robinson: brilliantly written, hard sci-fi with gobs of neat-o tech and ideas, combined with eco-awareness, plausible suspicion of rampant capitalism, and reconsidered societal ethics and morals.
Between Robinson and Heinlein et al there is no comparison: Robinson wins for his superior writing, chracters, ideas, and politics.
> The older crowd in sf was mostly right-wing. They hated the 60s, the hippies,
> the New Wave writers, the antiwar protesters, and Democrats. (Heinlein
> included. Never believe anyone who tries to argue differently.)
>
> The younger writers were their opposites in almost every way, with a few major
> exceptions like Niven and Pournelle.
Well, no, actually. Most science fiction writers in any era have been somewhere from slightly liberal to extremely liberal. There have always been a strong minority who were somewhere between slightly conservative to extremely conservative. BrainGlutton in the OP just happens to have read a few s. f. novels by writers who happen, untypically, to be somewhat anti-environmentalism. Frankly, this is another case of “Look, I just found three cases of something. That means it’s a trend. Don’t try to deny it by quoting counterexamples. I found it and I declare it to be a trend.”
Well, here’s a moral dilemma. If I describe something in so many words as “overgeneralized” do I have a right to complain when somebody else criticizes it for being an overgeneralization?
Remember, I was replying to BG’s question about the split in the field over Vietnam. This was about 1973. Nothing in the 30 years since has seemed to be to be as fundamentally divisive and as tied together with the writing end of things as that split was. There is absolutely nothing like it today, even with the acrimony over Iraq.
I don’t know whether anti-environmental panegyrics are a trend or not. But the OP asked where they came from. The answer is straightforward.
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