Sci Fi's golden age was defined by American engineers writing stories about how cool engineering would be at some point in the future. During the Golden Age of Science Fiction most of the engineers writing science fiction were 1.) Ex-Military, usually WWII or Korea, 2.) Building weapons for boeing and 3.) Middle class Americans.
What I'm trying to say is that science fiction is really, really fashy because most English language science fiction was written buy white men with military experience working as engineers in the US war machine, aka it was written by fascists. And when they were writing the kids reading Golden Age sci fi were mostly boys, because women were systemically excluded from engineering and science (despite always making important contributions in the shadows). And those boys grew up and went to Vietnam or Iraq, and came back and wrote more fashy science fiction about how awesome space America was and how dirty and evil space aliens are and blah blah blah John Ringo.
There's always been outliers and counter-narratives, but the cheap paperback main stream Science Fiction has largely been written by fascists for an audience of fascists.
Mass Effect is a basically just a fascists spank fantasy, with handsome and noble militarized empires fighting off ethnic inflected aliens until, oops, a big horde of totally alien monsters decides to destroy Space America for literally no reason, because Space America is perfect and there is no justifiable cultural, economic, or practical reason to go to war with it.
I really hate Mass Effect. "Hey, there's this species of super hardcore aliens who breed super fast but they're also bigger and stronger than us and totally warlike and we really have to do a genocide it's our only choice! But ooooh it's morally complicated because we're liberals! But we did it anyway."
It's just American Racist fantasies IN SPAAAAAACE
I'm sorry you're not getting a better reception with your books but in a decade where Halo and Mass Effect are the dominant Sci Fi properties the odds were always stacked against you.
Yeah, I think the archetypal example of the US imperialist writing sci-fi is Cordwainer Smith (a cheeky pseudonym). He was a literal spook, working for the OSS and CIA after, then the State Dept. He hated the hippie movement in the US However, like a lot of fash authors, his works inspired some great stuff. Cordwainer Smith has been cited as an inspiration for Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Evangelion.
but if it's just licensed sci-fi paperback shit like mass effect or star wars or whatever, i don't think there's anything other than its on-the-face entertainment value there
edit: some choice quotes from Smith's wiki page (real name Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger)
he was sent to China to coordinate military intelligence operations. When he later pursued his interest in China, Linebarger became a close confidant of Chiang Kai-shek.
He was recalled to advise the British forces in the Malayan Emergency and the U.S. Eighth Army in the Korean War. While he was known to call himself a "visitor to small wars", he refrained from becoming involved in the Vietnam War, but is known to have done work for the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1969 CIA officer Miles Copeland Jr. wrote that Linebarger was "perhaps the leader practitioner of 'black' and 'gray' propaganda in the Western world".[5][6] According to Joseph Burkholder Smith, a former CIA operative, he conducted classes in psychological warfare for CIA agents at his home in Washington under cover of his position at the School of Advanced International Studies.
He used his experiences in the war to write the book Psychological Warfare (1948), regarded by many in the field as a classic text.
Sci Fi's golden age was defined by American engineers writing stories about how cool engineering would be at some point in the future. During the Golden Age of Science Fiction most of the engineers writing science fiction were 1.) Ex-Military, usually WWII or Korea, 2.) Building weapons for boeing and 3.) Middle class Americans.
What I'm trying to say is that science fiction is really, really fashy because most English language science fiction was written buy white men with military experience working as engineers in the US war machine, aka it was written by fascists. And when they were writing the kids reading Golden Age sci fi were mostly boys, because women were systemically excluded from engineering and science (despite always making important contributions in the shadows). And those boys grew up and went to Vietnam or Iraq, and came back and wrote more fashy science fiction about how awesome space America was and how dirty and evil space aliens are and blah blah blah John Ringo.
There's always been outliers and counter-narratives, but the cheap paperback main stream Science Fiction has largely been written by fascists for an audience of fascists.
Mass Effect is a basically just a fascists spank fantasy, with handsome and noble militarized empires fighting off ethnic inflected aliens until, oops, a big horde of totally alien monsters decides to destroy Space America for literally no reason, because Space America is perfect and there is no justifiable cultural, economic, or practical reason to go to war with it.
I really hate Mass Effect. "Hey, there's this species of super hardcore aliens who breed super fast but they're also bigger and stronger than us and totally warlike and we really have to do a genocide it's our only choice! But ooooh it's morally complicated because we're liberals! But we did it anyway."
It's just American Racist fantasies IN SPAAAAAACE
I'm sorry you're not getting a better reception with your books but in a decade where Halo and Mass Effect are the dominant Sci Fi properties the odds were always stacked against you.
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Yeah, I think the archetypal example of the US imperialist writing sci-fi is Cordwainer Smith (a cheeky pseudonym). He was a literal spook, working for the OSS and CIA after, then the State Dept. He hated the hippie movement in the US However, like a lot of fash authors, his works inspired some great stuff. Cordwainer Smith has been cited as an inspiration for Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Evangelion.
but if it's just licensed sci-fi paperback shit like mass effect or star wars or whatever, i don't think there's anything other than its on-the-face entertainment value there
edit: some choice quotes from Smith's wiki page (real name Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger)