It does… but also it doesn’t, and certainly not on a one-to-one level. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had a staunch conservative/proto-fascist former friend recommend to me Lois McMaster Bujold’s books; he was quite in love with the military sci-fi aspect, but not so much the liberal outlook that her stories are steeped in. The same former friend also recommended to me Seanan McGuire’s books, which are also decidedly more on the liberal edge of things.
I wouldn’t have had to kick a Trump supporter off of my Discord server who basically saw my alternate history fic and was enamored to the point of joining, but ignored all of the liberal and leftist mindset I have steeped into it.
Going bigger, Paul Ryan, who is a political sociopath and hypocrite on a scale that is mind-boggling, liked to say that Rage Against The Machine was his favorite band–while the band members basically said that he was the personification of the machine they are raging against.
And how many hardcore conservatives willfully misinterpret Star Trek’s messages of inclusiveness and “we can be better”? Or Star Wars’ pointed comments on fascism and authoritarians? Or the mindset encapsulated by this picture?
So, yes, fiction can affect people’s mindsets. But it’s not a mold into which a mind is pressed, stamped out and formed into identical models, as some people seem to think it is. No, it is sowing seeds into fertile or barren ground, with the possibility of it taking root or not. And even then, what takes root there depends on how nurturing the existing environment is, and further cultivation.
