6 Utopian(?) Sci-Fi Books You Need To Read
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- Опубліковано 30 лип 2024
- In this video we venture into six utopian sci-fi stories that present a more optimistic vision of the future... sort of.
Thanks for watching and don't forget to check out my sci-fi books below.
Also, thanks to @orbitalodysseymusic for supplying the background music for this video. Head over to their channel to check out tonnes of sci-fi themed ambient music that's perfect to relax/study/read to. www.youtube.com/@orbitalodyss...
#scifi #utopia #books
0:00 - Intro
2:07 - The Culture series
4:04 - The City and the Stars
6:40 - Childhood's End
8:45 - Ecotopia
11:12 - Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
13:27 - Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents
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MY STUFF
linktr.ee/scifiodyssey
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vvv MORE vvv
MY SCI-FI NOVELS
www.amazon.co.uk/Darrel-Willi...
DELPHINE DESCENDS
After her family is killed and her homeworld occupied, young Kathreen Martin is sent to the distant world of Furoris for re-education. She will live the rest of her life as a serf - to be bought and sold as a commodity of the Imperial Network.
When her only chance of escape is ruined, a chance mistaken identity offers her a new life as the orphaned daughter of a First-Citizen Senator and heiress to a vast fortune.
She vows to claw her way into power to sit among the worlds’ elite. Then, with her own hands, she will reap bloody vengeance on them all.
But to beat them, she must play their game. And she must play it better than them all.
BLACK MILK
Prometheus has the chance to bring his wife back from the dead, but doing so will mean the destruction of Earth.
Spanning time, planets and dimensions, Black Milk draws to a climactic point in a post-apocalyptic future, where humanity, stranded with no planet to call home, fights to survive against a post-human digital entity that pursues them through the depths of space.
Five lives separated by aeons are inextricably linked by Prometheus’s actions:
Ystil.3 is an AI unit sent back in time from the distant future to investigate Prometheus’s discovery...
The mysterious Lydia has devoted her life to finding a planet that the last remaining humans can call home…
Tom Jones (he’s a HUGE fan!) is an AI trapped inside a digital subspace, lost and desperate to find his way back to his beloved in real-time…
Dr Norma Stanwyck is a neuroscientist from 24th Century Earth whose personal choices ripple throughout time...
Prometheus must learn the necessity of death or the entire universe will be swallowed by his grief.
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GOODREADS
You can stalk me on Goodreads to see what I'm currently reading. bit.ly/3rrcByD
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IMAGE USE
The images in my videos are mostly licensed stock photos. However, occasionally I will use images found online. I always seek to properly credit artists and offer a link back to their amazing work but sometimes it's hard to find the original source of the work. If I've used an image you own and I haven't credited you, please feel free to get in touch as I am always more than happy to do so. - Розваги
Just want to thank @orbitalodysseymusic for supplying the background music for this video. Head over to their channel to check out tonnes of sci-fi themed ambient music that's perfect to relax/study/read to. www.youtube.com/@orbitalodysseymusic
It was a pleasure : - )
My utopia is a gigantic library filled with interesting books, a comfortable chair, tasty beverages and something to eat. And just read…😊 But that is just me.
Hello Jasper 🌻 That's a Twilight Zone episode! Remember the one that turns into a dystopia when the guy's glasses break 🤓
@@IRosamelia I have to look that one up! Thanks.
@@jasperdoornbos8989 It's the old black and white series, where everyone's dead except one guy who is a bookworm 📚
@@IRosamelia but that doesn’t sound utopian at all! I prefer living people around me.
@@jasperdoornbos8989 and that's why you aren't in a Twilight Zone episode 😜
Its nice to know that there are still good utopian books to read, it seems like nowadays its all dystopian and almost no utopian settings.
💯
My utopia is a world where humanity puts all their will and power into driving us together towards better tecknology. A world where everyone unites and push outwards to the stars. A truly great achievement for humanity as a species, will come to us through the universe.
Why you think himans will live in space, they don’t even kive in the water.
We can’t even breed in space.
Unite all?
So ur dream is to destroy all diversity of thinking?
Your dream for certain is quite prefabricated.
@@adamnesico if you think unite everyone means destroying all diversity of thinking then you're the idiot one
Great list and reviews, I’ve always been strongly drawn to dystopian sci-fi… but these days you need only look out the window for that 😂 so it’s good to have some balance!
We live in a cyberpunk dystopia to be more exact.
@@MissionHomeowner Minus the cool cyberware 😕And the money to afford that. In fact I'm pretty sure most people are better off in an average cyberpunk dystopia than IRL...
It should be noted that Banks often questions the role of (pan-)humans (partners, pets, even parasites?) and the very point of existence in the society where even creativity is handled better by Minds. His utopia is very much, to borrow from Le Guin, ambiguous.
Also, Banks correctly observes that technological advancement in such a society would be rather slow - there's no societal need for it any more.
Great list.
Love utopian books, because they give me hope and relax me showing something better could be happening.
A few other utopian-ish books I love:
- Utopia 2048
- News from Gardenia (the whole trilogy, News from the Squares, News from the Clouds)
- Starforce series of novels
Any other suggestions?
Sheri S. Tepper's _The Fresco._ It's kind of a "utopia seed" novel, with a race called the Pistach contacting Earth and offering to help improve society by teaching us "neighborliness." It's a wild ride, with a lot of political clashes (not all of them human), and humanity gets a unique chance to perform a "welcome reversal" for the Pistach (read the book for clarification)!
There are a few triggers, though - a runaway abused wife and the husband who pursues her, a rather horrifying fate visited upon one of the louder conservative blocs, and a nasty group of monsters with their own agenda.
Really happy to have provided music for this one ! Thanks for Another great list and breakdown, Darrel
Man, your channel became one of my favorites. Your voice and narration are calming and help the listener focus on your words. great job.
Could not agree more! And I was inspired to read some books he recommended.
@@jasperdoornbos8989 he convinces me to read in every genre Haha, I'm searching for his suggestions on Metaphysical sci-fi
With regard to "The City and the Stars", that was one of the first books I thought of when I read your title, but not just because of Diaspar. Lys, Diaspar's mirror image, also presents a completely different ideal of a utopian society. The contrast between the two is at the root of Alvin's internal conflict as a Unique.
Utopian sci fi is my absolute favorite sub-genre. Especially near/mid-future. My favorite utopian author is Kim Stanley Robinson. His Mars Trilogy is like a magnum opus of utopian science fiction.
A great video, as always, thank you for increasing my TBR pile 🤘😄
Much appreciated recs! They all sound really good.
Fantastic video! The art that you display in all of your videos is amazing. Your scripts and narrations always engage my attention. Thank you.
thank you for the suggestions! will check some of them more in depth in my research
H.G. Wells wrote some utopian (sort of) novels that have been forgotten. Men like Gods is one of them, dealing with a utopian society coexisting in a parallel dimension of sorts, and the other one is In the Days of the Comet. Both novels are great on their own right and feature the quality of Wells prose which is extraordinary
Love your vids and your vibe man!
I've read the Culture series. Great books. I like dystopian books but I appreciate a break from everything being so gloomy. I like the idea of a post-scarcity. I would add The Commonwealth Saga by Peter Hamilton. One of my favorite Science Fiction series. Thank you for all of the great recommendations.
Thanks!!!
I love the idea of Utopian societies and often times seek out movies with that theme but have not read many books with Utopian societies. One I read last year and enjoyed-ALL OUR WRONG TODAYS-had a mixture of both worlds due to time travel. Thanks for the recommendations and added a couple of those to my TBR. I had not heard of Ecotopia but I love the premise and will definitely be adding that one.
Wahou ! I just finish to wrote an utopian story (I'm a french writer) and I discover your video. I go read Ecotopia asap ! Thx !
great list, some of these were on my radar already, but for instance doctorow i had not heard of
Very interesting, I will have a look for sure. I wondered if something like the "Void Triology" could also apply. There is definitely conflict, and I would not describe it as particularly peaceful. However, all in all, it paints a very optimistic (if you work under the assumption, that there are always a certain level of chaos, change, and renewal), yet nuanced picture of how a future society could look like. Also, when it comes to technology and alternative forms of living.
Iain M Banks is terribly underrated as a Sci-Fi author IMO. His Mainstream work such as The Crow Road, Wasp Factory etc (which by the way are amazing) negate his prowess as one of the absolute masters of his craft. When lists and TV shows are made considering the very best SF Authors the usual suspects appear, Clarke, Asimov, Wells etc (I would add EE Doc Smith as well) Banks is always conspicuously absent. The Culture, are one of the most well written and rounded civilisations in all of the Sci-Fi canon, I was lucky enough to meet him briefly at a book signing in Yeovil Waterstones, where he signed a copy of Excession for me, which in my humble opinion is up there with the best "M" novels along with Conside Phlebus followed by Inversions which is beautifully written and leaves you to ponder whether Vossill and DeWar met again in other "special circumstances" Make no mistake, for all the conjecture, Inversions is is a Culture novel, and to add to that, one of if not the finest. A genius, R.I.P Iain.
He peaked early with the _Player of Games_ then went slowly downhill. Later books have plot holes and misconceptions that his editor should have picked up but did not.
Where are you spending summer Darrel, in Antarctica? Why the long sleeves? Let us see your lovely tattoos! I pretty much think Arthur C. Clarke has got to be my favorite sci-fi author ever. He doesn't play with my emotions like other authors (you're so guilty of that yourself too!) but just shows me worlds of wonder. How about the microcosmos inside Rama for a utopia? I guess a giant pool of accelerated evolution doesn't count as a society, ha! I've totally read those two books you mentioned by Clarke like ten years ago and couldn't even remember until you started talking about them. Someone who hasn't read Childhood's End would have no clue why you show the figure of a demon in your utopia description, not my case 😄 I began reading the first Parable book last year but couldn't bear with the descriptions of awful abuse committed against women, so gruesome. My best guess was Ms. Butler had been victim to a sex crime and writing about it in a sci-fi setting was a means of catharsis for her. I just couldn't believe the protagonist had hyper-empathy either. I'm pretty sure someone with that condition would not be able to function at all in such a society; I just couldn't suspend my disbelief. It was such a disappointment since I had read good reviews and had thought I could relate to a character cursed with high empathy.
Ths city and the stars is amazing book and one of the best books by Arthur Clark. Wachovski inspired by her for Matrix! Her setting is my world for life together with Proust's Belle epoqe (In the search of last time) and Anti-terra (Ada, or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov)!
Childhood's End has an unexpected barb at the tail end! One of the novels in my collection I tend to revisit. And I need to complete my collection of The Culture series, as I only have a couple.
My favorite sci fi utopia: Extingayal by Valentin Saric. One of the most fast paces and satysfying utopia starting and ending with a diary entries.❤
Voyage from Yesteryear by James P Hogan
I tried 4 Culture books. Finished 2. Gave up on the series.
Not sure if it fits perfectly the criteria of an utipoia, but I'd like to point outMalka Older's Informocracy, the first of three books. I've read it, but not the sequels, so...
It delves in the concept of microdemocracies, in which no polity can have more tham 100.000 citizens, and every ten years people vote to determine which coalition will set the rules for coexistance between states that often are the size of one or two city blocks.
No apologies needed for the Culture series. By far my favourite book series though I feel that I should branch out to other books and series. Sadly my current personal situation does not allow much time for this . Still watching your videos at least helps me explore some of this.
😊👍
Interesting how Childhood's End is both a utopia and a tragic dystopia. Which brings a question - if a utopia is even possible at all.
Dawn by Octavia Butler is another great Utopia esque
I totally want to live on a GSV....
Becky Chambers' "Monk & Robot" books
Surely the point of _The City and the Stars_ is that despite seeming to be a Utopia is isn't and the illusion is maintained not only ny the perfection of its machines but also by the refusal of its inhabitants to recognise its defects.
Extingayal by Valentin Saric.😊
i like you when u don't make a top 10- list which makes us gone crazy
To be more pragmatic about the power games:
Daemon & Freedom by Daniel Suarez
I tried four Culture books and finished two, Player of Games and Look to Windward. Not impressed and have given up on the series.
So where would you place 'Logan's Run' ? It's certainly a Utopia for the young :-)
Like the idea of heaven. Utopia terrifies me.😢😢😢
Bye, bye. Freedom and opportunity. Here's your box climb-in.😮
There's no greater hell than living in a pointless "utopia."
I wrote a utopian novel, "Real Grid"
Someone please remind me A novel by an author with usually righ-of-center political views, featuring a starship from a militaristic, intensely capitalis Earth encountering a previous colony living in a classless society where reputation stemming from work well done is valued the most. It also features a moon with "scars" from some kind of weapon.
Weapon Shops of Isher by AE vanvogt is an interesting libertarian utopia where invincible defense breaks a society down.
A rather tortured and skewed reading of the novel.
Riders Of The Purple Wage novella by Philip José Farmer could be considered utopian...no work , people pursue art and whatever they want
I guess they could be called utopias but for me the The Culture, The city and the stars and definetely Childhood's End are dystopias in the guise of utopias. The veneer of the perfect society, of all the problems solved is there but dig a little deeper and it's clear that it's nowhere near perfect.
What about Solarpunk?
Utopia the ultimate fairyland!😅 Instead of Unicorns & Fairies, instead we have "benevolent AI & Nanotechnolgy assemblers.
Utopia is not just about technology, utopia is something we all want and it is possible but powerful leaders of the world don't want this to happen.
Interesting list. Looking forward to checking out Ian M. Banks and Ecotopia.
Diaspar (Claŕke): thé city has one rule noone is allowed to bréak: no-one can leave the city, unless oné finds the secret entrancé.
Engine Summer by John Crowley is my favourite utopian book and one of my favourite sci-fi books altogether. Set in the very far future, long after the demise of our civilisation, separate little societies have formed out of the survivors and although their lifestyles are quite beautifully magical and different from each other, they are also very plausible and down to earth. It's a fabulous read and I'm always quite upset not to be able to know more about this fabulous world.
that one recent Indifferent Example's Aside.
devonexplorer Hrm.
a GA race member (GA Humanity, mostly. for now) from a vast (Lore-wise, Mostly. which is Unfortunately still) setting's, for me for example on the other hand.
Hrm. [Instantly Narrows my eyes at That 6th part]
Eugh. that is Not Good use. [slowly Shaking my head at that Choice of titling about said-6th place's]
as Usual, for you kind of writers out there.- [Unhappily voices out while now directing this towards those and futuringly whosoever More would do that similarly according to this video's 6th place's After seeing it]
Don’t forget the word utopia means nowhere. It was a joke by Thomas more who wrote the original novel “utopia”
The Culture is the only one of those utopian societies I would actually move to.
'-culture is the only one of those-'.
well, if coming from a single definition's conclusion like this if that is the case then. hrm.
but it is not the Only example out there Across fictions though.
(let alone The Final Shape of everything. beyonders from the marvel omniverse, the touhou multiverse's(?) certain members, the xeelees. even those like the *Hive/[Worm] 'gods'* , some other etc can tell you that).
'-I would actually move to.'.
Meanwhile, a GA race member (GA Humanity's, mostly) for such like me for example instead on the other hand.
@@CaptainPilipinas AI is not there yet.
@@_Mentat .....
@@_Mentat (Sarcasm/Etc, or....?).
@@CaptainPilipinas I assumed such a nonsense response could only come from an AI.
From boring to horror! 😢😢
eat