Yes, Asimov's Foundation has people smoking, reading physical newspapers and using physical money, lining up for customs when arriving to Trantor. No women unti

Yes, Asimov's Foundation has people smoking, reading physical newspapers and using physical money, lining up for customs when arriving to Trantor. No women until later on in the series (in his defense, he may have not talked to many women at the age he wrote the first novels). The stories also have to be marketable to contemporary audiences. There may have been brilliant sci-fi at the time about strong, health-minded female protagonists, but I doubt it would have risen to popularity in 1950s society, and thus would have been forgotten. You can see the effects today with some of the backlash against certain Disney IP. I don't think sci-fi is a good predictor because of both the author's bias and society's (i.e. the The Market's) bias against topics that upset it.