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solyin | on: Patrick Stewart has died
It's a utopia, which is rare amongst sci-fi futures. Ask about sci-fi and what comes to mind first is almost always some kind of dystopia. Terminator, 1984, Deep Space 9, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner, Dune, Tank Girl, Minority Report, iRobot, Westworld, Altwred Carbon. Those aren't worlds that seem like great places to live if you're not rich! So Star Trek is much a work of fiction as the rest of those, but for all its flaws, at least is paints a mostly nice picture of the future that someone might want to live in, not crushed under the heel of a corporation. It makes sense; a story with no conflict isn't interesting, and dystopia provides for conflict. To philosophize, it's why I think we're so afraid of AI and robots and the future. It's why I wrote my book the way I did.
AnonymousPlanet | parent | next
> It's a utopia, which is rare amongst sci-fi futures.

Utopias used to be the most common scifi futures. This is what the so called Cyberpunks (Sterling, Gibson, Cadigan, ...) rebelled against.

It used to be all about what wonders technology will bring us. By the time of the 70s it became clear that technology doesn't necessarily make everything better, but can be a burden in itself, or even widen the gap between the haves and haves not. And that is what they wrote about. It turned out to be the most popular scifi with audiences deeming it more believable.

WalterBright | root | parent
Technology makes a lot of things better. Like eliminating symptoms of 95% of cystic fibrosis victims.

> even widen the gap between the haves and haves not

America's poor have a higher standard of living than medieval kings.

phlakaton | parent | next
I would not call Deep Space 9 a dystopia. Nor Babylon 5, for that matter. They are not happy places to live, for sure, but both settings are abundant in hope and possibility.
probablyStimmed | parent | next
Tank Girl makes this list? Why not Judge Dredd, or even Idiocracy?
solyin | root | parent | next
Feel free to add your own entries!

As far as Judge Dredd, my personal beef is that Megacity One's "dystopian" density with 800 million inhabitants from Boston to Washington DC barely ranks in terms of density in today's top 100 cities.

As far as Idiocracy, I believe that if the networks had played that and it was promoted on YouTube for free the night before the most recent presidential election, it might have gone differently.

What else would you add to the list?

Aeolun | root | parent
Idiocracy isn't a dystopia. It's a documentary.
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troupo | parent
> It's a utopia, which is rare amongst sci-fi futures.

Some say it was the last sci-fi utopia in modern pop culture.

bigmattystyles | root | parent | next
Is it a utopia? On earth and in the federation they make it seem so, at least post-scarcity but at the edges of the federation you have Romulans, the Borg, Cardassians. Multiple main characters undergo torture, etc... It would make an interesting TV show / spin off where people are shuffling / politicking for power in a post-scarcity world.
dd8601fn | root | parent
The utopian bits were never really explained, either.

They mostly just said it was all great and fair and nobody needs money and is somehow trying to be their best selves… nevermind the numerous examples to the contrary.

They weren’t really post scarcity. They never explained how they’re not in a constant state of rioting when a weird government/military decides what everyone can have or do.

You just go with it, because that’s the backdrop. You have to suspend disbelief and just enjoy the story.

But also, Picard is the best Captain, by far.

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lukan | root | parent | next
There have been quite a bit more at least in print, but maybe not so mainstream

This one is pretty famous I think and I enjoyed it a lot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy

(I just read that James Cameron held the screen production rights and was planning a series, but it never happened)

soVeryTired | root | parent
Does Iain M Banks count as pop culture?
tialaramex | root | parent
Right, Banks' Culture seems fairly mainstream and because it doesn't need to make episodic adventures it often gets to actually do utopian stuff Trek wouldn't even if only as a backdrop to the exciting story. The repeated instances in which Culture children play happily, insulated from whatever terrifying stuff we're reading about is an example.

Or if Comic Books are in scope, obviously "Miracleman: The Golden Age" is a utopia. Explicitly so. It is about the ways people are still people in a utopia.

Less mainstream, Greg Egan's Amalgam is also clearly a utopia. The couple in "Riding the Crocodile" choose to die at the end of that story, more out of some sense that stories need endings than because of any outside force.