This is the premise that makes Iain M Banks’ Culture series of novels so compelling.
Even though it is a massive interstellar Type2 society that is “fully automated luxury communism” many people are going to be problematic, angsty, and childish. The result is an always interesting plot.
A more thorough exploration of someone living in a relative utopia but being a long streak of misery by nature is Delaney’s novel Triton. Main character is a jerk and you get to explore why, while extremely cool things are happening all around.
I love that about the Culture novels: they are socially coherent. Banks is very keen on telling us about the psychology of this utopian society.
I once tried some Delaney but dropped it as psychedelic hippie scifi. I hope I wasn’t unjust in doing that, but afair it was from that time. Maybe it even was Triton. It was all confusion (“tripping”) and exploring a completely desire-based, erm, exploration.
Recently I read (and barely managed to finish) Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, which seems to fit into a similar category (Beatnik scifi?). It had way too many shortcomings, plus it was an old translation that only managed to make the latent racism/sexism more prominent. But it was also very inventive and captivating.
This is the premise that makes Iain M Banks’ Culture series of novels so compelling.
Even though it is a massive interstellar Type2 society that is “fully automated luxury communism” many people are going to be problematic, angsty, and childish. The result is an always interesting plot.
A more thorough exploration of someone living in a relative utopia but being a long streak of misery by nature is Delaney’s novel Triton. Main character is a jerk and you get to explore why, while extremely cool things are happening all around.
I love that about the Culture novels: they are socially coherent. Banks is very keen on telling us about the psychology of this utopian society.
I once tried some Delaney but dropped it as psychedelic hippie scifi. I hope I wasn’t unjust in doing that, but afair it was from that time. Maybe it even was Triton. It was all confusion (“tripping”) and exploring a completely desire-based, erm, exploration.
Recently I read (and barely managed to finish) Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, which seems to fit into a similar category (Beatnik scifi?). It had way too many shortcomings, plus it was an old translation that only managed to make the latent racism/sexism more prominent. But it was also very inventive and captivating.