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.

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AnonymousPlanet an hour ago | 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 21 minutes ago \| 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.

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phlakaton 2 hours ago | parent | prev | 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.

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probablyStimmed an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Tank Girl makes this list? Why not Judge Dredd, or even Idiocracy?

	▲	Aeolun 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Idiocracy isn't a dystopia. It's a documentary.

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troupo 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> It's a utopia, which is rare amongst sci-fi futures.

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

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bigmattystyles 2 hours ago | 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.

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dd8601fn 2 hours ago | 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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pzxc an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> 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.

Well, post-scarcity really just means that ordinary citizens have free access to replicators (matter-energy converters).

So the closest example (and the only one I can think of where you see civilian Earth, outside of SF Academy / SF HQ or a time travel episode), is probably the double episode in DS9 where the changelings reach earth and there's a false flag event by a corrupt Admiral that causes a momentary power outage and a planetwide lockdown for a few days. I believe it's meant as a 9/11 allegory -- the homeland is attacked and suddenly everyone WANTS a police state, or at least is willing to go along with it, and only the courageous honorable military officers are there to stop the corrupt ones, all the civilians are frightened into compliance.

But post-scarcity? That just means when the security officers aren't around, people can wander into Joseph Sisko's restaurant and eat as much as they want for free, and Joseph Sisko can run his restaurant with as much food supply/ingredients and kitchen equipment as he wants for free, and every gets as much clothing as they want for free, etc. When Earth isn't on lockdown, that's the implication, everyone has as much material goods as they want for free, that's post-scarcity and the implication is they have it.

Post-scarcity doesn't mean infinite resources, or that you can have whatever you want, not everyone gets free land/space on which to build their home, for example. If that's your definition of post-scarcity then I guess at least the Q Continuum has it! :)

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ddalcino 40 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm pretty sure I remember a few episodes that explained that by this point, humanity had evolved past character flaws like avarice. Star Trek's Earth was a utopia because of qualities in the people that lived in it, not lack of scarcity. The subject came up because the crew was interacting with alien species that was not as evolved, and therefore was not living in a utopia.

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rbanffy an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The utopian bits were never really explained, either.

What would the effects of growing up in a post-scarcity utopian society be on a human? To never fear poverty or hunger? To be sure that no matter what they do (or don’t) they will be housed and cared for as long as they live?

I assume the people in Starfleet would be the ones who are most inclined to work for their betterment, with no fear of competition, with the drive to do The Right Thing. Outside the organisation there would be people who would be totally happy in doing nothing.

	▲	solyin 43 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		We can look at publicly documented trust fund kids or other (financial) elites and their behavior to get an idea and it runs the spectrum. Princess Diana. Prince Andrew. Paris Hilton, both when she was in the news every day and the quieter stories that have surfaced since. 50 Cent's talked about his child preferring to have money that he didn't have to work for. It's not the same since they exist in a world where most other people aren't at that level, but we can see that the human psyche isn't always able to manage it.

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bigmattystyles an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Picard is the best by a mile, which is great praise because I liked Janeway and Sisko a lot too.

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lukan 2 hours ago | parent | prev | 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)

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soVeryTired 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Does Iain M Banks count as pop culture?

	▲	tialaramex an hour ago \| 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.