The Sword and Laser discussion

I read a lot of post-apocalyptic, dystopian stuff, and love it. But I want to make sure I'm looking at the other side. Hit me with your utopian recommendations!

You could try Ken MacLeod's The Stone Canal, which is set in an anarcho-capitalist society based heavily on the ideas of Hayek and David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom: A Guide to Radical Capitalism, and the sequel The Cassini Division, set in an anarcho-syndicalist world based upon the ideas of Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin. Though be forewarned, these are heavy political books -- and I don't mean Republicans vs Democrats, but deep political philosophy and history. If you don't know anything about Communism other than Marx, you'll probably spend many chapters with a glazed expression.

Unfortunately, while there are many libertarian and socialist utopias out there, MacLeod's two novels are the only ones I've found that don't suck. You could try stuff like Looking Backward and the works of L. Neil Smith, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Island by Aldus Huxley; Gulliver's Travels by Swift; Utopia by Thomas More;
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn.

Although the last is an integrated controlled no resposibility life it may not be what you are looking for. The first is absolutely about Utopia and the second depends on how you examine it. The third's title speaks for itself. All are older but good reading.

The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Le Guin is one of my favorites.

Joe wrote: "I loved A Boy and his Dog, Harlan Ellison and Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle."

Lucifer's Hammer is a Utopian novel?

Patrick wrote: "Joe wrote: "I loved A Boy and his Dog, Harlan Ellison and Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle."

Lucifer's Hammer is a Utopian novel?"

A Boy and his Dog as well?

The closest to a Utopian SF series I can think of is "The Stainless Steel Rat" series. It's very light in tone and set in a universe where crime is all but unknown. The problem with Utopia is that the lack of stress makes it hard to drive an interesting plot.

Skip wrote: "The problem with Utopia is that the lack of stress makes it hard to drive an interesting plot. "

Oh, I definitely agree. Dystopia and chaos is so much more interesting, because conflict is what plot is made from!

I can think of several types of stories that feature Utopias. The first is the misfit in the perfect society. In these Utopias everyone is seemingly happy except for the one guy who does not fit in. Brave New World, The City and the Stars or Gattaca are examples that come to mind. In other stories all the action takes place out side the Utopia in the more uncivilized lands. Star Trek and Culture novels by Iain M. Banks fit this category. James Alan Gardner writes some novels like Expendable that fit into both of these categories. Then there are the dystopian novels that feature some hidden utopian place for which the characters are searching. I can think of a books that fall into this category right now but the old movie Logan's Run sort of fits.

I took a course on utopian novels years ago.
The ones I remember reading are The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, Herland, Woman on the Edge of Time, and Walden Two.

I really liked the Ursula Le Guin book as a sci-fi book in and of itself. But I took away from the course the idea that most utopian books are written more to encourage a specific ideology (feminism, socialism, etc.) rather than for fictional entertainment value. Walden Two was also very interesting in concept. No thrilling plot twists though.
Le Guin also wrote The Lathe of Heaven, about a man whose dreams change the world, trying to create a utopia. I don't know though if you can truly call this a utopian novel.

Jenny wrote: "Skip wrote: "The problem with Utopia is that the lack of stress makes it hard to drive an interesting plot. "

Oh, I definitely agree. Dystopia and chaos is so much more interesting, because confl..."

That just means a Utopia needs an outside threat to be interesting.

No, the real problem with Utopia is that it's subject to severe values dissonance. If you don't share an author's fundamental world-view about what makes an ideal society, his Utopia is going to be a crapsack world to you. Compare, for example, Plato's Republic to Brave New World. Both societies function along similar lines -- the Noble Lie is made concrete reality through bio-engineering, and orgy-porgy is an enactment of Plato's ideas on sexual communalism. And yet Plato thought his idea was awesome, while Huxley sees it as an awful society.

And that's assuming the Utopia has any connection to reality. Far too many Utopian authors create societies that could never function with real human beings. Any attempt to implement such systems would result in the largest pile of skulls since the Mongol Empire.