expereince the thrills and spills, as our brave robocleaners cleans and disenfect the carpet.

Day 21 - Everything is fine, we are all happy, it is all going well
Day 22- Everything is fine, we are all happy, it is all going well'
Day 23 - Everything is fine, we are all happy, it is all going well
Day 24 - Everything is fine, we are all happy, it is all going well
...
Day 28 - The tension rices as the main character overslept for 10 minutes. What has gone wrong! why did not the alarm ring? and somone has left a window open - has the arch villain struck again?

No that's not what happend, at Day 28 you sudden wake up in a empty hospital with blood on the wall you sream HALLO.
and their is nobody, till that moment.

o f*** not a other zombie movie.

Because the future is grim, at least at our current rate. Dystopian fiction allows people to explore a future that will probably happen, at least to some extent (especially the cyberpunk genre, which is probably our most likely future) and I think that appeals to people in a specific way. For me, I love playing Fallout because it's a world so different from our own, but a world that -- at least in some respects -- is entirely possible in the future if we're not careful.

However, my most recent foray has been into cyberpunk, which is absolutely a warning against the current path we're on. It speaks against over-reliance on technology, against vain body modification, against letting big corporations run unchecked (most of it isn't anti-capitalist, just against abuse of capitalism), against the selfish me-first attitude and almost always against invasion of privacy. ALL of those subjects are ones we're dealing with now. We've essentially entered the early days of becoming a cyberpunk society and that should terrify EVERYONE... but sadly, everyone is too obsessed with their smartphones and streaming services, their ability to buy whatever they want whenever they want, their ability to be narcissists in front of the whole world (via social media) and they don't care about the fact that all of this is placing civilization RIGHT into the place where the elite want us.

So yeah, dystopian fiction is popular, I think, because it shows us a much more likely future than the likes of traditional sci-fi a la Star Trek or (for a more recent series) Mass Effect. Both have their place and I love both of them, don't get me wrong, I just think dystopian and pessimistic sci-fi is popular because it shows us a future that we may live to see, at least in the early stages of it. It's a lot more realistic than flying across the galaxy and living in a utopian society.

I'm not familiar enough with any of those to comment. I don't really watch that much TV, and those are all TV shows. The depiction of technology is not overall negative though because the Death Star was destroyed by some Rebel Alliance technology... the X-Wing fighter. It's a technological threat (negative depiction of technology) that was dealt with using a technological response (positive depiction of technology). So shouldn't it be considered neutral?

The technology is just a tool used by the Empire and the Rebel Alliance in the conflict. It's not presented as inherently good or bad...

And it's not presented as the sole cause of much of the society's problems in some kind of dystopian or highly pessimistic scenario with the killer AI robots in the Terminator franchise or the enslaving robots of the Matrix where they want to either enslave or annihilate the entire human species. These examples are quite different because it is fundamentally the technology itself (and its nature as a self-aware and hostile AI) that is the enemy of humanity in the story.

And Star Wars is not a dystopian story either, which also makes a big difference.

In Star Wars, the root of the problem with the Death Star is not the fact that the technology exists... the problem is that the Galactic Empire (evildoers in the story) posess it and use it as their weapon. So the technology is not inherently good or bad in the story... it's just a tool. One could argue the Death Star would be a terrific thing if only the protagonists of the story (the Rebel Alliance) posessed this technology instead of the Galactic Empire.

EDIT: I accidentally clicked the button indicating a solution to the thread, but don't actually consider the issue resolved. Feel free to continue discussing the issue if you like, guys.

Stargate, Aliens and VatCosTP are movies though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6oTziHKM_c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9Z1Mr-1bLE

Anyway if the idea was that it is scifi where technology or progression doesn't make people's life miserable but rather better, I guess those qualify? E.g. in Aliens the problem was not the technology, but a violent alien race, and a big greedy company who wanted to bring them to Earth for profit. If it wasn't the advanced Earth weapon technology, Ripley wouldn't have had a chance against the aliens. And that android guy who saved that kiddo at the end, bless him too.

And Starship Troopers! Do not forget Starship Troopers!

I have the feeling that you're trying to make conclusions based on a fairly limited number of shows. I mean, if I look at, for example, the Rotten Tomatoes' list of top 20 sci-fi shows here:

https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/best-sci-fi-tv-shows/5

then out of these 20, only 4 depict a dark(er) future (Firefly, Black Mirror, Westworld, and Battlestar Galactica), rest is fairly positive or neutral regarding the impact of tech.

There's also plenty of sci-fi books authors with a generally positive outlook on the role of technology, including some highly influental ones - Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke, to name a few.

So I'd say, maybe you're simply making a wrong assumption? :)

+1 for Arthur Clarke and Isaac Asimov.
Cause drama sells more books or movies. Technology is a neutral tool, can be used either for good or evil. We're afraid of the unknown.
When I started reading science fiction under 30 years ago in my teens, the outlook was more optimistic. The movies I watch today are more pessimistic.

Bicentennial man is an example of a feel good movie and delving into human-machine relationships (and notably robot rights) that isnt depicted as sad or pathetic. Technology is only a plus that makes lives better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicentennial_Man_(film)

Technology is just a tool and the issue often stems from mankind using technology badly which results in tragedy. Hell, even in the Matrix, the fault lies with mankind who abused the robots and started the war which we lost and got enslaved. And stories where AI becomes the villain is often a result of the AI seeing human history and concluding humans should be eradicated for the betterment of the world lol.

Hard not to be when you spend a few decades experiencing human nature.

Because in classical literature Sci-Fi is a mechanism of exploring the human condition, not just proving meanial entertainment. We use analogs like Robots to talk about present day problems in a way that doesn't offend people who have opinions on a topic.

it is easier to talk about bigotry in terms of a robot president than to get people to admit they're bigots to the idea of a black president or a female president, is it not?

another alt...

Is there something wrong with what I said?

yes

Then what is it?