8 Great Utopias in Sci Fi
Dystopias are easy. Like humor, Utopias aren’t.
Utopia is the happily ever after where most stories end because, well, the comfort of living in day to day bliss gets same old… which makes it clear why conflict is a storytelling essential. These 8 authors built ideal future worlds — societies where mutual cooperation evolved (or was forced) to form successful anarchies. Then something happened.
That something need not include weapons. Sure, bad guys can invade and often they are us, but conflict can be as simple as a hero’s self doubt. This list skews toward utopian sci fi as psychological explorations or… Protagonists Have Intriguing Adventures While Unarmed. If, however, I expunged all guns this would be a list of two.
While writing my own version of a hopeful future, I accidentally veered into a dark hole. It’s a challenge to craft an engaging climax in a world where cultural kinks have been worked out so well that customary tropes of storytelling — bad guys / violence — aren’t the point.
Getting stuck is a great excuse to seek examples of how other writers have tackled this quandary. Fortunately, my impasse has been going on long enough to consume stacks of great sci fi — from hard facts and theory to spacey and operatic.
