After the two world wars, the attitude of all literature changed forever, but maybe none quite so much as science fiction. The hopes and dreams of the future were tarnished by the horrors witnessed by all. This caused a lot of science fiction to be much more dystopian. However, if you’re looking for a sci-fi novel to read that isn’t based on apocalyptic doom and gloom, pick up one of these utopian stories.
Finding the best utopian sci-fi books
I should prelude this list with the point that just because sci-fi is based in a future utopia, it doesn’t mean there isn’t struggle and conflict in the books. Without either of those things and a perfectly happy, harmonious world, the book would be incredibly dull. Nobody wants to read that. So, although the universes of these sci-fi novels are set in utopias, the situations may be less than ideal.
The Dispossessed – Ursula K. Le Guin
This sci-fi novel by the seminal Le Guin looks at utopia from two different angles. Our protagonist, Shevek, lives in what the residents consider to be a perfect utopia. They live in the ideal anarchist society, where everything is shared, and nothing is owned. They follow the law of anarchy to a T and actually strive to suppress any possibilities of advancement that may lead them to change. The anarchist moon of Anerres is contrasted with the patriarchal capitalist neighboring planet of Urras, which is much more comparable to ours.
The utopia of The Dispossessed is tentative. Although the residents consider their lives perfect, from an outsider’s perspective, a lot is left to be desired. When everything is shared, there is no longer a need for greed, gluttony or jealousy. Even when there is a struggle across the planet due to drought, everyone suffers together and works to pull through. This excellent book looks at the possibilities of an anarchist society and the realities of what that would really mean in practice.
The Culture Series – Iain M. Banks
When AI inevitably takes over, will we be left with a Terminator-style wasteland, fighting endless waves of homicidal robots, or will it be more like the universe of Iain M. Banks? In the Culture novels, AI reached the singularity and decided that sentient beings were so little threat that they would just take care of us like you would a small, fluffy animal. The result is essentially a utopia for humans in these sci-fi novels.
Culture ships and the immensely intelligent AI that lives within them function as more than just transport. Many of them house billions of inhabitants, all living in perfect luxury, with no cause to want for anything. The culture ships easily provide complete habitats and monitor each resident, ensuring they are catered for in every way. The utopia of these ships extends to the worlds that the various residents, human or otherwise, have populated.
This results in some wonderfully creative lifestyles from Banks. Gender fluidity, body modification, lives of obscene luxury, or the opposite, are all completely possible and facilitated by the Culture ships. One ship, known as the Sleeper Service, houses billions of cryogenically frozen bodies and only one sentient, hermetic human. There is a utopia for everyone.
I recommend any fan pick up this collection of some of the best sci fi series of all time.
Ecotopia – Ernest Callenbach
This utopian sci-fi novel is indicative of the free love movement of the 1970s and 1980s, painting a picture of what could be if the long-haired hippies could pull their flares up and actually form a government. The book is set in 1999 after the US has crumbled and split apart. Due to economic collapse, the states of the US are separated, allowing for the formation of Ecotopia. This is a small nation state focused on the benefits of living freely, exploring the ideas of green culture and many other experimental societal theories at the time.
Ecotopia is explored by a journalist, the first to really be admitted the region. The story is told through his diary entries and article pieces as he digs into a society that believes in complete freedom of expression, development, love, and fluidity. The society is deeply in touch with the nature around it yet doesn’t stray away from technological advancement. There is deep social responsibility and a focus on the individual as part of the whole. It all seems just so wonderful.
However, after reading this book, I highly recommend you pick up The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by journalist Tom Wolfe to get a real, boots-on-the-ground experience of just what a hippie society really gets up to when left to its own devices.
Mars Trilogy – Kim Stanley Robinson
Earth sucks, let’s go to Mars. This is the basis for this collection of three books and, if you like, another short story collection. With earth in decline, a colony ship is sent to Mars in the first book, filled with the greatest and brightest humanity has to offer. They establish a colony and quickly begin to thrive. Of course, there are various factions that form on the planet, but on the whole, what they are forming on the planet is a utopian society away from Earth.
There are, of course, struggles and conundrums to deal with. As mentioned before, that’s what makes a narrative interesting. However, this sci-fi utopian book focuses on what could be achieved with the freedom of a new planet and the minds to pull it together. As the Earth slowly crumbles into a police state, thousands flock to Mars, threatening the very peace and survival that they have worked so hard to achieve. This is a prime example of hard science fiction in the genre, based on science and verifiable theories.
The Centenal Cycle trilogy – Malka Ann Older
The idea behind this collection of utopian sci-fi novels is a brilliant one and infinitely fun to explore through the gripping narrative. This future utopia sets the scene for micro-democracies, also known as Sentinels. These are made up of only 100,000 people and require a new vote every 10 years. Each Sentinel has hundreds of options when it comes to a vote, and every single one has its own set of rules.
The narrative is fast and fun and will keep you turning page after page. However, what makes this book so interesting for me is exploring the various micro-democracies Older has created across the world. There is so much scope for creativity in the book, and she really delves into the possibilities these utopian government systems can provide. The whole system is presided over by Information, which is an enormous fact-checking search engine. This keeps everyone informed and provides all the Sentinels with everything they need to make educated decisions.
Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
Okay, so I actually really enjoyed this book. Maybe that makes me a sociopath. Maybe it makes me a capitalist pig—I don’t know. Either way, there is a utopia in this sci-fi novel that splits the audience right down the middle and then does it again and again. The book itself is about society trying to find its own utopia through the means of creating a completely fair and just world. It focuses on the levelling of the capitalist playing field by preventing any one industrialist from taking too much power. However, Ayn Rand seems to think this is a terrible idea.
Imagine if we told someone like Elon Musk that he was no longer able to hold the monopoly on electric vehicles and he had to give away half his production lines to a competitor. How would that go? Sure, the income and profits would be shared, but wouldn’t that make him a lot less driven to even bother progressing at all? In Atlas Shrugged, the powers that be try to create a fair and just world through the division of industry. However, the industrialists all start disappearing, ruining these dreams of utopia. This 1000+ page book could have been a quarter of the length, but it’s an interesting delve into the ideas of utopia in a subtly sci-fi novel.
Island – Aldous Huxley
A lot of the time, sci fi writers like to wrap up their ideas and theories in the narrative of their books. The stories serve to expand and explore the theories within, allowing the characters to serve as the tools of example. Aldous Huxley is certainly one of these writers, with his well known work Brave New World, and of course, this utopian sci fi novel, Island. This was actually the final work he wrote before his death in 1963, and serves as the antithesis of his much more famous work, on what is described as a dystopia.
Like Ecotopia spoken about before, this book digs into a theory for possible utopian existence. In Huxley’s utopia there is a deep bonding of both Buddhist beliefs and intellectual philosophies, blending the two together. The island that the main protagonist washes up on is the perfect society Huxley dreams of. There is no military, meditation is widely employed, along with drug use and free sex. Multi-parent child raising techniques are used, and a strive to live entirely in the moment is core to the peoples beliefs. This is a fantastic insight into how Huxley sees a utopia functioning.
The Long Way to A Small, Angry Planet – Becky Chambers
A utopia doesn’t need to be a galaxy or even a planet. Sometimes a utopia can be as small as just one single spaceship, making its way to a distant planet. In this book by Becky Chambers, this is exactly what she has created her sci fi utopia in. A tiny crew aboard the ship are making a huge journey across space to a planet that will guarantee them riches and success.
She paints beautifully the picture of relationships, love, emotions, and comradery aboard the ship. Reading through the book will fill your heart with the beauty of the human, and not so human, spirit. The narrative of the story is really not the main focus of the book. Chambers instead uses the microcosm of the ship to dig deep into how a tiny community can work, despite having their individual goals and experiences.
Existence – David Brin
This book has an incredibly optimistic view of the future of humanity. We are dedicated to patching up a lot of the mistakes me made in the past, repairing scars left from less conscientious times. Technology and progression are all geared towards the betterment and unification of the human race. This is an optimism not often seen in sci-fi literature, and its a refreshing concept of a utopian earth.
In Existence, a space garbage collector comes across a Stone. This stone, it turns out is a message from another race. The message is simple, they want to have a chat and make first contact. The book expands on the prospect of humanity, as clean and positive as it now it, dealing with this new opportunity. Brin expands on the ideas of first contact and really gets into how humanity would respond and what it would mean for us as a race on the whole.
A Modern Utopia – H.G. Wells
What other utopian sci-fi book to finish on than the amazing work of one of the founding fathers of the science fiction genre. A Modern Utopia by H.G Wells is one of the most famous works of utopian science fiction. In this story, two men are transported in the blink of an eye to a planet that is the exact replica of earth, but completely peaceful. The utopia that exists there is explored by the two travelers, and in a typically Wells way, the theory and idea is expanded.
He creates a fascinating world in which ownership is allowed, but almost everything is owned by the World State. Women and men share equal rights, and motherhood and pregnancy is subsidized. Humanity has been almost completely freed from physical labor by machines, and currency is now units of energy ensuing workers move to where energy is cheap. This ensures that work is well divided across the world. Wells, as always, is far ahead of his time with this book, seeing far into the future and making some truly insightful predictions of what could be.
Published: Jul 12, 2024 06:00 pm