So we can all agree that the world around us is not without its challenges. What better time to contemplate what could be, if only we lived 11000 years in the future. If you could choose any future society to reside in then, which one would it be? For me…
In third place Peter F Hamilton’s confederation – perhaps life as an itinerant spaceship captain owning a twenty-year old junker playing an uncertain trade between the star systems. I’d have a small flat on a chichi converted asteroid and maybe a ranch on a frontier world. Shameless romantic adventuring. Either that or joining the Confederation Navy.
In second place William Gibson’s sprawl from the Neuromancer trilogy – where the sky is the colour of a television tuned to a dead channel. Being a console jockey, riding an Oto-Sendai deck to infiltrate corporate ice deep in cyberspace. Hanging out in dive bars with burned out ex-hackers, chatting away with eccentric AI’s and riding the shuttle up to an orbital hab on a decaying orbit.
But…way out in front is Iain M Bank’s Culture. Waaay in the future there’s humanoids across thousands of stars across the galaxy. Bank’s anarcho socialist post-scarcity society has never been more seductive. I’m two novels into a re-read and am gutted I am 11,000 years too early for chatting with eccentric ship minds, working for Contact, or even the super-secret Special Circumstances. Yes the novels do reveal that though on the surface the culture is all touchy-feely and do what you will, under the surface it’s quite prepared to indulge in blackmail or false flag ops to preserve this hanging loose civilization. As a ordinary culture citizen I ca pretend none of this really matters, and change sex if I’m bored, spend decades playing super-sophisticated games, or cataloguing astronomical oddities. When no-one has to work, all work is a form of play – even being a double-agent or diplomat.
I guess I find novels provide a bit more room to imagine yourself in – but who fancies wielding a lightsabre, joining the Weyland-Yutani corporation, or striking out in rainy future LA as a ex-cop, ex-killer, ex-bladerunner.
I’m quite at home on Giedi Prime thank you.
I’ve been reading Larry Niven & Edward M. Lerner’s 5 book prequel ‘Fleet Of Worlds’ to the Ringworld series. They didn’t exist when I first read the only Ringworld books, Ringworld Engineers being the only other one. This was the late 70’s. So I’d love to exist on the Ringworld where you’ll never lack a different holiday destination and especially as that bastard Atreides son is determined to see the back of me.
Back to the Ringworld, as I’ve said I last read the books over 40 years ago and I think I read both books at least twice. So I’m looking forward to reading them again and the 3 sequels written since.
I’ve now put Iain M. Bank’s Culture series on my list to read having read them once, thanks @moseleymoles, but now I want to immerse myself with one continuous read.
Ringworld is a good shout @baron-harkonnen – exciting aliens (Puppeteers, Kzinti) to hang out with, anti-aging drugs, General Product ships to zoom around the universe with. Though Niven comes at the post-scarcity society from a very different perspective from Banks, Known Space is also a great place to contemplate hanging out in. The law of diminishing returns sets in IMHO with the Ringworld sequels, but the original I must have read 3 or 4 times and always really enjoyed. Like many scifi writers, a great short story writer and the core Known Space stories are fantastic.
I got the 2 sequels after Ringworld Engineers cheap on eBay so if I’m not engrossed the charity shop can have them.
I read the first Banks effort. Was that the one that ended on a giant underground train set? That was quite enough for this trooper.
Yes. But a long, long way from the best of the Culture novels.
The Culture is the only one of those 3 examples that isnt a terrible distopia (only BITS of The Culture are terrible distopias, indeed literal Hells). So, The Culture for me please.
I’d recommend reading Look to Windward first, and then go back or forward. Excession, Surface Detail, and The Hydrogen Sonata are excellent.
There’s a Heinlein story about two scientists and their buxom sassy girlfriends (no messy kids to ruin everything of course) who invent a machine that can flit between universes. Quite fancied that life, as a fresh-faced innocent twenty-something.
Iain M Banks’ Culture for me too.
Live as long as you like, in a body/gender of your own choosing, doing whatever you want to whenever you want to do it. Or take a sabbatical and do/be absolutely nothing for a while.
If anywhere, I would spend my time on Aldous Huxley’s Island.
I’ll take the lotus-eating decadence of Michael Moorcock’s Dancers at the End of Time, thanks.
The Planet Lythion in the year 40,000 is not wíthout its charms.
Life in the future with Bender, Fry and Co would never be dull.
I’d be a lōtophágoi and welcome Odysseus along.
Failing that I’d opt for a future in Logan’s Run. Oh maybe I’ve not thought this through.
The Jetsons.
That’s great for you up in Elysium, but what about the poor Flintstones down below?
https://throwbacks.com/flintstones-and-jetsons-theory/amp/
Or the Eloi and Morlocks
The OP asked for a “utopia” – take it up with mosleymoles, you two!
Fair point @fitterstoke.
But in every utopia, is there not always something not quite so ideal lurking behind the scenes? That’s a common Dr Who plotline.
absolutely, all of the Utopias above (including Futurama which is a great call) have their darker sides, but I guess I wanted futures where some of the great problems we live in have been solved, rather than Gilead or 1984 where it’s so much worse even than 2023 UK.
Surely we were promised a golden future after brexit, did something go wrong?
Ooh, little bit o’ politics…
Went the same way as those jetpacks, Hubes.
Thank you, @moseleymoles – in that case, I stand by The Jetsons!
Does Space Family Oginson count?
Another not-so-perfect Utopia: the world of John Boorman’s Zardoz.
“In the year 2293, the human population is divided into the immortal “Eternals” and mortal “Brutals”. The Brutals live in an irradiated wasteland, growing food for the Eternals, who live apart in “the Vortex,” leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a country estate. ”
Boorman had been trying to dramatise the Lord of the Rings. That having failed, he made Zardoz.
Connery was trying to break away from the bondage of being 007. Dashing around in a swimming costume in a sci fi drama seems to have done the trick.
@Kaisfatdad it is amazing how many people quote this film as one of the worst of all time. Even the revered Mark Kermode. Never seen it myself though so maybe I should.
Thanks @Kjwilly. I had no idea it was so universally scoffed.
The Rotten Tomatoes verdict is not favorable.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/zardoz
I saw it at the cinema when it came out and it certainly entertained me. Boorman always made interesting films.
Were I to rewatch it now, I suspect I would be slightly less enthusiastic. Watching the trailer, Connery does look a bit of a pillock in his swimsuit.
How about a future many years ahead where a machine will enable us to morph into mermen and escape the horrors of the modern world….
Now what year was all this going to happen?
I find the future world of The Incal, as depicted by the great French illustrator, Moebius, (the nom-de-plume of the late Jean Giraud), very appealing,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giraud
Take a look at this excellent documentary: