[zouhair]

I stopped reading Sci-Fi, it's just all dystopia and even when it's about a Utopia it's mostly about how it crumbles like with the Terra Ignota Series.

We live in a dystopia, we need some utopian ideas, enough of the gloom and doom that ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy..

[Frotag]

There's a subreddit called /r/hfy for more positive scifi. It tends to be indie stuff and I think it goes a little too far in the other direction but at least some of the top-voted ones are interesting.

Off the top of my head...

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/32973/synchronizing-minds-...

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/67180/here-be-dragons-book...

[WillAdams]

The problem is, tales of the land of the happy nice people doesn't make for much of a story, or

“. . . the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull.” ― Arthur C. Clarke, _2001: A Space Odyssey_

[awesome_dude]

Or the matrix take -

> Agent Smith tells Morpheus that the first, "perfect" Matrix failed because humanity requires suffering, leading them to create a simulation based on the "peak of your civilization"—1999. Smith highlights that the machines actually took over during this era, making it their civilization rather than humanity's. The choice of 1999 provided a stable,, yet inherently flawed, era characterized by 90s technology, post-Cold War optimism, and, crucially, the necessary amount of human misery to prevent the simulation from failing.

[WillAdams]

The thing about _The Matrix_ is that the world-building was much more interesting than the premise (to make a world in which comicbook superheroes made sense).

Not seeing why human misery is necessary --- that line always felt propaganda-like --- a utopia would arguably be more stable since there would be less striving for change.

[awesome_dude]

> there would be less striving for change

Precisely, there would be nothing to strive for.

As an engineer I often say "If everything in life went to plan it would be a very boring life indeed"

[WillAdams]

Yes, so the "computer" would continue running in this state without change --- which is presumably what the machines in charge wanted --- if there's supposed to be a reason which makes stress pleasing to the machines please state it in plain and simple terms (English is not my mother-tongue).

[awesome_dude]

Your thinking that its the machines being pleased by the state is 100% wrong.

WHY would a machine need a simulation at all?

[modeless]

Star Trek TNG was an interesting utopia. I want more of that. (Not more Star Trek, more utopia sci-fi).

[WillAdams]

But it kept getting undermined every other episode, to say nothing of things such as Section 31.

[bigstrat2003]

Section 31 wasn't in TNG. And I wouldn't say the utopia got undermined in TNG either. When you (fairly rarely) had corruption or villainy inside Starfleet, those people were always treated as rogues who were acting on their own, and were decisively defeated by the utopia. It isn't like in DS9 where the writers flirt with the idea that maybe the Federation can't work without a dark side; the TNG writers play the utopia straight.

[WillAdams]

Fair point.

One of the earliest books to look at this in an interesting way was John M. Ford's _How Much for Just the Planet?_ (depending on how one looks at it and one's tolerance for humour)

[zouhair]

That's just lack of imagination.

[WillAdams]

Well, Ursula K. LeGuin did author _Always Coming Home_, which I quite enjoyed, but it's a very different book which only seems to have a niche audience.

[Paul_Clayton]

I disliked _Always Coming Home_, substantially because it felt misandrous though the less optimistic setting probably also played a role (a post-industrial Earth with a rape victim as the "protagonist" and not a heroic victim who transforms evil and suffering into good). It did seem to be exceptional in literary quality, a strong extension of the divided story mechanism in _The Dispossessed_ (and _The Left Hand of Darkness_? — I do not remember how that novel was laid out). I did not listen to the audio produced for the books, so I did not receive the full experience, but the literary quality of the novel was excellent (in my opinion). (I especially liked the simple squirrel drawing, an odd bit of trivia to remember.)

(I thought the acknowledgement of life when killing a mosquito was an interesting cultural aspect.)

I did kind of wish that a monastic-like community (or university?) had been presented as seeking more benefit from the City of Mind. Unlike the tribe that asked how to make airplanes (which failed in their military objective), the monks/scholars would train to ask good questions, seeking to restore the land and encourage communication and cooperation among humans. Having even a small bunch of humans interested in such larger issues would have been more optimistic (and perhaps realistic as the existence of an actual Oracle might encourage some people to be scholars, making connections and asking questions). Of course, a ten volume novel would have been even less popular, and LeGuin clearly was motivated to write a more gritty novel.

[ahhhhnoooo]

Read some Becky Chambers.

[bigstrat2003]

I would not wish for anyone to inflict Becky Chambers upon themselves. She is a really awful writer. Interesting world building ideas, but she spends far too much time using her books to lecture the reader about morality, with all the subtlety of a Sunday School lecture.

[ahhhhnoooo]

Do you have any examples? I've read all her work, and while I'm familiar with the phenomena you describe generally, I didn't find it that notable in Chambers. Yes, some characters have neopronouns (xe/xir, iirc?), but there's no "And this is why anyone who doesn't respect pronouns is a bad person." They just are used for aliens whose genders are more complex than ours.

Maybe monk and robot has more of this, being a post industrial, solarpunk story about a tea monk bicycling across the countryside with a robot who wants to learn what humanity is?