Of course, authors are entitled to their opinions and have every right to insert them into their works, but I'm getting terriblely sick of the attacks and sterotyping that go on in a lot of the speculative fiction field. It seems like every black man is a street thug who can't speak english, every pro-lifer is an hateful bigot, anyone in government is lying,self-serving,and determined to bury the first admendment, and every reporter is kind and caring.

Does anyone else see this, or am I just a little on edge and need to take some nice drugs? =) If you agree, do you think these kinds of stories are getting published because a large number of editors agree with the underlying philosopy?

Maybe it's just me, but I think I've read one too many stories billed as "hard-hitting" and turn to have little more substance than the ranting rhetoric behind it.

And I think that's sad, because SF is suppose to be the field where you can discuss hard issues, but... intelligently please. And with some kind of meaningful story behind it. Because the story always comes first. The writers imagation should drive the story, not the planks of the party he belongs to.

P.S. And if anyone has read any good short story collections, let me know!

My conservative and religious friends see some sort of conspiracy going on here -- like the complaints one heres from the right wing about the "liberal press."

I sense that there's a bit of truth there, but not much. It is almost a sure thing that reporters and editors' biases make it into print more than the biases of others with whom they disagree. But the point is, its all biased to some extent, and there are plenty of reporters and journals with one or the other bias to make the whole thing a wash, IMHO.

I think there's more (and less) to this than just a liberal or conservative bias creeping into stories. I think there are has always been a surfeit of bad writers, some of whom get published. There is also a tendency on the part of authors to change the world with their words. If you are handed a pulpit, people expect you to preach, no? And Sci-Fi has always been full of moralizing. In fact, one might even say that Sci-Fi has always had more than its share of hack writers who try to shove their particular moral bent down the readers' throats.

Some writers are so good that we forgive them. Some writers are even better and, unless they do interviews with crummy journalists, we never hear of their weird political and sociological beliefs. And when we do, we often wish we hadn't.

So, my advice. Buy better books. Take a breather from the new stuff and read some classics. They're all a bunch of moralizing nonsense too, but at least its well written. I'm finishing Les Miserables right now, for instance. Could Hugo have been more of a left-leaning socialist if he tried? I doubt it. But, like you said in your post, he wrote so well that the story takes precedence over the soapbox. Same deal with Dickens.