when I say “neo-intellectual attempt at discussing metaphysical topics” I think the key words are “neo-intellectual” and “metaphysical.” I welcome any fiction dealing with politics, philosophy, hard science, humanist ideals . . .

Combine “neo-intellectual” with “metaphysical”, though, and what I mean I don’t like is when, for example, the movie Event Horizon crosses over from being sci-fi/horror into a morality play about Hell and “playing God.” Or, again, Evangelion going from a very cool sci-fi anime series that starts being about giant robots fighting giant aliens, easily morphs into a character drama that deals with friendship, love, family, alienation, loss, drive, obsession . . . this is all still good . . . and then, quickly at the end, slapping the viewer in the face and the creator saying “Ha, now that I have you hooked – let me expound on my ridiculous spiritual world-view of how disconnected we all are!”

Or (as much as I did like the end of BSG) the end of BSG, put very close to my views by this blogpost – http://blog.funtax.org/2009/03/22/anti-science-fiction-thoughts-on-the-final-bsg/ – I agree with about 90% of what the writer there says.

Better yet – this article here hits a corollary on what I feel when I watch a lot of “science fiction” – http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=149 – that being that it is really all anti-science. When I say “neo-intellectual”, I mean people who are writing this stuff expounding as if they are being philosophical about how “science (like fire to Frankenstein’s monster) bad” -
and when I say “metaphysical” I mean every time you get a Surrogates or a Solaris or a Flatliners, the science fiction aspects are at best backdrops (not necessarily a bad thing) and at worst a set up for “man is out of touch with nature!”

There’s a line, for me at least, between “the modern Prometheus” of Shelley’s Frankenstein looking at obsession, loneliness and the responsibilities for a creator to care for and control his creation – and the “playing God” rhetoric of works like The Invisible Man where the scientist clearly states “I meddled in things man must leave alone.”

It’s the faux-spiritualism that so much fiction uses in how “bad” science and technology is, and if we all just went back to picking berries and living in caves we’d be much happier “as nature intended” – or, as destroying all the technology at the end of BSG to “live or die off the land” is so clearly giving us a message (further ANVILLED into us by the “angels” and the montage of “robots bad” at the very end.)

Ultimately it is so disappointing from BSG because, for most of the beginning, the show depicted topics ranging from civilian vs. military, politics vs. anarchy, religion vs. science, in unbiased (and unbalancing, meaning they didn’t attempt to balance, just present as raw and real for the different characters) ways…
and then the show ends on such a blatant “there is a God, and btw, playing God with technology will cause your world to explode!” trope.

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Long story short, I was never looking for “blasters and starships.”
I’m looking for less spiritual didactic “science bad” hackneyed cliches.

Sci-Fi hasn’t change or become more intellectual, you have. As children, it’s all blasters and starships in our perspective, and we remember it vividly. As we get older, and more critical and intellectual ourselves, we begin to read more in the texts we encounter, see more of it’s themes and underlying dilemmas. And, unfortunately, it’s not something we can easily unlearn.

All that said, I am sick of shows/movies/stories masquerading as sci-fi and ending up being some neo-intellectual attempt at discussing metaphysical topics, and the last season of BSG especially delved a bit too deep into this for me (though nowhere near as bad as, say, Neon Genesis Evangelion) and would like to see more serious sci-fi not turning into Lost.