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I think your points are valid...the question, for me, is *why*
they are valid. Yes, what you describe is what the studio folks
*think* is SF. Because they don't know any better.

Lemme take this away from SF for a moment to make the point.
For the last 45 years, the networks and studios thought cop shows were
all of a piece. If you really sit back and look at them objectively,
most cop shows were more adventure shoot-em-ups than anything else, the
bad guy has a plot, the good guys try and stop him...they had very
little bearing on reality. The occasional exception, like a Hill Street
Blues, was just that, an exception and not repeated. The networks
thought that's what a cop show WAS. Police Story and Jake and the
Fatman and Cannon and all the rest.

Then along came a book...Homicide: Life in the Killing Streets,
which was trotted over to the networks with startling speed. It was a
gritty, inside look at how this stuff *really* works. And as with one
voice, the networks said, "Oh, so THAT'S how it works," and then you
instantly had the Homicide TV series, and NYPD Blue and others
fast-tracking to be real cop shows.

They can course correct *real* fast if you know how to approach
them. Do the studio heads *really* appreciate cop stories now more than
before? No, not really, their eyes are still on the bottom line of
finances. But they now allow these sorts of stories to be done.

You can do the same thing with SF. We've done a little of that
with B5, and now there are more shows coming up with long-range story
arcs, from Space Cases to Dark Skies to others now in development.
We've done stories in aresa not usually considered covered by SF, from
religion to the death penalty to other areas. We've educated. Not a
lot, I'm not exaggerating our influence, but a little...and that's a
start. More could be done if the SF publishing community got off its
butt and addressed the media rather than running from it or deriding it
or simply ignoring it, in the belief that if they close their eyes it's
not there anymore.

SF writers, more than anyone else, should understand the
dangers of not keeping up with changes in technology in the areas in
which you work.

jms