> Pure utopias were very rare for a reason: They're really hard to set compelling in stories in, and so most of the ones that do exist tend to set stories on their edges and fault lines.

True, and I think Iain M. Banks specifically commented on this in interviews and essays. The Culture novels are mostly set outside of The Culture. Star Trek is mostly set on the fringes of or outside of Federation space, but especially during Roddenberry's lifetime, no matter what the crew was dealing with, they were very self-consciously people from a utopia.

I like your analysis of Cyberpunk.

Yeah, I specifically had the Culture in mind when I wrote that, because Banks seemed a lot more self-aware of that and playing with and actually telling us fun things about his utopia and trying to actively flesh it out, while to me at least it feels like Roddenberry was caught up in wanting Star Trek to be morality plays in space that had to teach a lesson to the point of getting very heavy handed with it at times (and he might be right the heavy-handedness was necessary given some of the takes I've seen on various episodes), while still telling us frustratingly little about his utopia itself.