"Of course the BBC gave [Russell T.] Davies another show called Torchwood, which is basically "slash fiction" on television"
Dude, you say that like it's a bad thing.
So on the one hand, we have an appalling rant about how women are ruining science fiction for men. (And also, gay men apparently don't count as "men.") Entirely unsurprising, given that the rant is published on a self-declared "anti-feminist" website called The Spearhead, and the author's name is "Pro-male/Anti-feminist Tech." (Honestly I think this dude has gotten enough attention at this point, and I'm not going to link to him. The last thing he needs is more attention.)
On the other hand we have famed, acclaimed, and (if you ask me) god-like science fiction writer Charles Stross slamming the entire Star Trek oeuvre for being insufficiently science-y. And you know, dude's got a point, but so what?
It seemed like an odd thing to take a swing at, if you ask me. Had anyone been marching around with a banner declaring the collected works of Star Trek to be "THE SCIENCE FICTION TO END ALL SCIENCE FICTION"? I mean, we all love it, but it's never been a show about the science. But Charles Stross is one of the hardest hard science fiction writers out there, so I can see where he's coming from. He's just marking the boundaries of his territory, so to speak.
At any rate, I can't help but be bemused by the workings of a universe where the "anti-feminist" idiot blogger and Charles Stross - a hard sci fi author who writes thoughtfully and intelligently about gender roles and the nature of privilege - somehow end up in complete agreement. I don't half think that if Stross had known about that other article, he would have scuttled his own.
You can make a case for "science fiction is getting less science-y" without blaming a whole entire gender. (And poorly, to boot, because who in their right mind would call the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica more girly than the original? ARE YOU KIDDING ME.)
Science is hard, and it's a lot easier to write about human relationships, and the appeal of the latter is much wider than the appeal of the former. And "wider appeal" is the stock in trade of a cable channel like Syfy Network. (I still cringe when I type "Syfy" but I'm sure that will wear off eventually.)
Furthermore, as we also learned this week, in the article that got Stross hot under the collar, Star Trek script authors just used the word "tech" in their scripts, then relied on someone else to fill in the science-y bits. Which is only a revelation if you didn't know that years ago, and didn't we all know that years ago? But I digress.
Clearly, these "insufficiently science-y" things are popular. Just ask Joss Whedon, Russell T. Davies, or Ronald D. Moore. So what's the goal, here? To convince us that hard science fiction is better than "relationship-heavy" science fiction, by making fun of it? That's like a Mac user trying to convince a Windows user to switch by making fun of Windows. OH WAIT.
