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The Prologue and the Promise (crop), Robert McCall

Lev Grossman: Do you think of The Culture as a utopia? Would you live in it, if you could?
Iain Banks: Good grief yes, to both! What's not to like? ...Well, unless you're actually a fascist or a power junkie or sincerely believe that money rather than happiness is what really matters in life. And even people with those bizarre beliefs are catered for in the Culture, albeit in extreme-immersion VR environments.
This interview, TIME Magazine

Any dictionary will give you this much:

n:

  1. An ideally perfect place, especially in its social, political, and moral aspects.

Easy enough. Let's write one! First, you come up with a socially perfect place with a flawless political process. A little difficult, but you'll get there, sure... Now figure out what "moral" means well enough to refine it to an absolute. Hey, it was tough, but you came through in the end.

Now get everyone to agree with you.

Yeah. We can't help you with that part.

In fact, it is so much easier to get people to agree with what is wrong with a place that most social-commentary settings fall into the dystopia category. When a brave author does attempt a utopian setting, it seems to come from a need to grind a particular axe. Thus we get libertarian/conservative/progressive utopias, religious utopias, communal utopias, and other philosophic one-note offerings, each with its own collection of people attesting they would rather die than live there. It helps that the word itself was created to mean such a place can't possibly exist because it's that good.note 

The downfall of a utopia in the main character's eyes will most likely be seeing the inevitable, thorough suppression of individuality. How else could everybody get along all the time? Even in individualistic utopias, the supposedly rugged individualists who compose the perfect society have a suspicious tendency to agree on everything (or at least everything political) and act in similar ways. The end of violent conflict seems to require uniformity.

See also Perfect Pacifist People and Utopia Justifies the Means. Contrast with (of course) Dystopia. May run on Aesoptinum. A Crapsaccharine World can be a subversion or a deconstruction of this trope. A False Utopia is a mix of both sides — all the looks of a utopia, but all the problems of a dystopia to maintain it.

Common flavors include:

  • Arcadia — a place where people embrace the good old ways and live in wondrous simplicity.
  • Crystal Spires and Togas — When extreme technological advancement wraps itself in the trappings of ancient civilization's aesthetics.
  • Heaven: The ideal afterlife.
  • Sugar Bowl — where cuteness and sweetness is king.
  • No Poverty — a frequent feature of any Utopia.

For the eponymous book by Thomas More, see here. If you're looking for the British drama series of the same name, see here, or for the Australian comedy series, see here.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Appleseed: Deconstructed; the city of Olympus only acts as one due to a large part of its population being "bioroids", artificial humans with suppressed emotions. And then if course, there's the constant policing due to various external and internal threats that try to go against Olympus' utopian vision. One of the two antagonists of the 1988 OVA is even a Tragic Villain convinced that Olympus is a Gilded Cage after similar beliefs caused his wife to leap to her death. Of course, later adaptations of the series reconstruct it as well, showing how the people involved generally want to do their best to keep that vision alive.
  • Magi: Labyrinth of Magic: Several characters tell legends of Alma Torran, a paradise ruled by King Solomon which was eventually destroyed. It turns out Alma Torran did indeed exist, in a parallel universe.
  • Sailor Moon:
    • The Silver Millennium, at least for the people who lived on the moon, is depicted as time of peace and happiness, when humanity was largely united and lived carefree lives, with the only problems coming from demonic beings. This ended when a jealous witch allowed herself to become a vessel for a force of pure evil.
    • Crystal Tokyo, the far future realm of Neo-Queen Serenity, is intended to be the second coming of the Silver Millennium, and so it's canonically described as peaceful and serene paradise.
  • Stellvia of the Universe depicts a rather realistic Utopia, wherein the humanity suffered 99% loss of population in mid 22nd century due to a freak cosmic cataclysm and was forced to unite as one, if they were to rebuild their civilization and survive. For the next 200 years, this Utopia was maintained by the threat of another cosmic catastrophe but as soon as danger was gone, it started falling apart. Even then, however, one could see just how difficult it is for most people to even imagine purposefully hurting others. Eventually humanity united again, against a new threat, and later, in their leap for the stars.

    Comic Books 
  • The Autumnlands: Tooth & Claw: Despite a rash of racism the floating cities are a utopia. The animals live peaceful lives dedicated to the pursuit of magical knowledge and industry. In the Autumnlands at large there haven't been any major wars for a very long time.
  • Marvel Universe:
    • All-New Wolverine: In the alternate future shown during the "Old Woman Laura" arc, the heroes have finally won after defeating all the villains during the "Doom War". The sole exception is Latveria which is still under the iron thumb of an aging Doctor Doom, something Laura seeks to rectify.
    • Fantastic Four: This is also a long-standing What If? trope with Doctor Doom; whenever he actually manages to take over the world, he manages to change it into an honest to god utopia with minimal (not none, mind) removal of freedom. At the end of the day, the reason he never seems to get there in the main universe is because he's too obsessed with one-upping Reed Richards, and because he often finds that Victory Is Boring; it's a lot easier to conquer than it is to sustain, paradise or not.
    • Silver Surfer: The original depictions of the Surfer's homeworld of Zenna-La (the name being a variation on The Shangri-La) were decidedly utopian. Zenn-La was a very old, very high tech society that had long ago achieved world peace, where crime was virtually unknown, everyone was peaceful and learned, and where most human physical wants were easily met with technology. Its people had long ago explored great swathes of the universe... and having thus explored, they had come home again and stayed there. Norrin Radd, who would become the Surfer, found his world horribly boring, and resented the current generation (himself included) for reaping the benefits of their ancestors' labors which they themselves did nothing to earn. The 1990's animated series depicted a less isolated and introspective version of Zenn-La. In this version, the planet is famed throughout space for its spiritual enlightenment, and pilgrims come there to study the ways of peace. Even dissident Kree and Skrulls who want to find a way to end their millenia-long war. In both versions, they're defenseless when Galactus comes, until Norrin offers himself to the Planet Eater.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Wonder Woman Vol. 1: As one might guess given it's name as originally envisioned Paradise Island was a utopia, a peaceful bountiful place of learning and science where women from across time arrived as refugees fleeing war and other oppressions and decided to stay and build their own immortal society.
    • Wonder Woman Vol. 2: While still an Arcadia Themyscira is a far cry from the utopia Paradise Island was, at first. Later writers reconstructed it as a utopia where War Refugees from across the galaxy were welcomed, orphans were taken in and scholarship flourished while knowledge from across the universe was collected and stored in the libraries. This version also accepted orphans and refugees who were not female, though the Amazons themselves are of course all women.

    Fan Works 
  • The Bolt Chronicles: In "The Coyote," Bolt recommends that Charlie, the title animal, leave their yard and head to a more ideal place to the west, such as a state wildlife preserve, national forest, or national park. The coyote does so, singing the song "Big Rock Candy Mountain" (which describes such a perfect place) as the story ends.
  • In one of the more peculiar utopias ever described, the skahs of With Strings Attached consider their world of 25+ years ago to be a utopia, since they're all adventure addicts and loved running around fighting the Tayhil and their monsters. Unfortunately for them, they slaughtered everything, and now they're all going crazy with boredom. It is, indeed, heavily ironic that what they now consider a Dystopia is actually, by Earth standards, far closer to utopia.

    Films — Animation 
  • Life on the Axiom in WALL•E is seemingly perfect, with everything done by robots, if you overlook the fact that humanity has devolved into fat, infantile couch potatoes. What with the weight problem and the fact that everyone communicates via computer screens, you wonder how anyone on that ship managed to have babies. Unless the babies are genetically engineered or something.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The fictional African country of Zamunda in Coming to America.
  • The City of Domes in the movie and TV series (and book) Logan's Run is a utopia for its inhabitants, but has a nasty stinger in its tail as far as our sensibilities are concerned.
  • The world of the future in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is a utopia built on the music of Wyld Stallyns. George Carlin explains that right down to the mini-golf scores, everything's just great. "Even the dirt... it's clean!"
  • The Big Bad of the sequel, Chuck De Nomolos seems to be entirely motivated by really hating the music that his society runs on. It appears some folks will always be tortured in any utopia.
  • The Matrix has an odd case of this: considering that the Matrix itself was designed as a False Utopia for its inhabitants, one would expect it to be a world without many of society's problems. Because people kept rebelling since they thought something was off, the makers kept tweaking it until it reached a state mostly everyone was content with — late 20th century life as we know it, which apparently was the "perfect" balance between struggle and peace to be livable.
  • Wonder Woman (2017): Themyscira is an arcadia where women live peaceful lives and are free to pursue their interests at their leisure, though it being cut off from the rest of the world isn't ideal for all the Amazons most love it.

    Literature 
  • The name comes from Sir Thomas More's satirical book Utopia, published in 1516, which described a communal, agrarian state. However, More hung a lampshade on the entire idea with the title- "Outopia," in Greek, means roughly "no place" ("Ou," "not," and "topos," "place") while "Eutopia" translates into "good place" ("Eu", "good"), thus the common meaning for More's title. The pun was almost certainly intentional. The extent to which More's Utopia is actually utopian is a matter of some debate-More actually made a point that there is no privacy or private property, slavery still exists (as a way of punishing adultery), and though all four of the religions are tolerated, atheists are not, as "obviously" without belief in a god or afterlife they have no reason to be moral (the fact that they aren't actually killed or otherwise punished, however, but merely sent to speak with the priests to change their minds, is very progressive for the era).
  • The concept itself is much earlier than the name, going all the way back to Plato's dialogue The Republic, written in the fourth century B.C.E. Plato's Republic, besides being Older Than Feudalism, is the first of a long list of Utopias which most modern people would find terrifyingly totalitarian, with no private property and its meritocratic, eugenicist caste system ruled absolutely by "philosopher kings". It also gave us the concept of the "noble lie", the mechanism Plato thought would hold it all together, namely people believing that they were born from the earth itself in their respective castes (to accomplish this, children would be taken away from their mothers and raised in state nurseries) and the gods or nature itself had ordained it that way. Since this was part of Hindu society for centuries among the many other systems like this, it seems that it can work, if not perfectly.
  • Deconstructed by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, which provides an example of a hyper-controlled Crapsaccharine World, driven by utilitarianism, mass consumerism, and complete state control and enabled by psychological conditioning, prescription drugs, and mind-numbing propaganda. Ironically, Huxley changed a few things about it that suddenly turned it into a utopia in a later novel; that book is called Island.
  • The Lord of the Rings has an often overlooked utopia in the form of "The Shire". The simple agrarian hobbits manage to live a leisurely lifestyle while remaining prosperous and undoubtedly well fed. They have average lifespans in excess of 100 years. They enjoy frequent celebrations and gift exchange. Their only armed force, Sheriffs, deal more with lost livestock then any real criminal behavior, and in fact in the whole history of the Shire there have been only four instances where the hobbits needed to muster any sort of military force; all were due to external threats. According to Frodo, as of the events of the "Scouring of the Shire" chapter, no hobbit has ever killed another hobbit on purpose in the Shire.
    • Though it is debatable just how utopian the Shire actually is. It is worth remembering that all the hobbits that are POV characters except Sam are members of wealthy and powerful families, with Pippin being the son of the Thane of the Shire, and Sam is, in spite of his youth, pretty much an Old Retainer. Also, while no-one is denying that the Shire is probably one of the nicest places in Middle-Earth to live, the hobbits are also portrayed as insular, xenophobic, reactionary, clannish, gossipy and prone to Tall Poppy Syndrome in the extreme. Frodo himself expresses frustration with this mindset, feeling that an invasion of Dragons or an earthquake would do them some good. The books also make it clear that the Rangers of the North are responsible for the hobbits' ability to live in peace. It is also quite telling that when Lotho starts tearing up the Shire, the only recourse offered is "Talk to the Bagginses and hope they sort him out" and when he starts bringing in muscle from outside there is no power that prevents him from doing so. It falls the the Hobbits who have been to the outside to rally the Shire and deal with the ruffians. As the elf Gildor Inglorion points out hobbits can fence themselves in but they cannot fence the world out.
  • Looking Backward: 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy (1888), one of the first American utopian novels, which described a socialist US in the year 2000. News from Nowhere by Willam Morris was a direct response, as he deemed it overly sterile and bureaucratic. Naturally, both works have their detractors.
  • "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin, paints an image of a utopia whose survival and prosperity is dependent on an Aesoptinum (the city's happiness and perfection is Powered by a Forsaken Child forced to live in perpetual misery for intentionally unexplained reasons), perhaps as an allegory for Christ's sacrifice or utilitarianism. This might count as a Dystopia instead, or as well. Since LeGuin is a Taoist, there may be no intended Christian theme-she has stated it to be based on the theme of the scapegoat (although that also bears some resemblance to the Christ story).
  • Le Guin's novel The Dispossessed is subtitled An Ambiguous Utopia, which nicely summarizes the setting — Anarres is presented as a much less flawed world than ours, but it is still far from perfect. Le Guin puts down much of this to an obstructive bureaucracy and decay of the idealism that led to Anarres's founding in the first place.
  • Always Coming Home, an anthropological record of a futuristic Solar Punk After the End society, is another LeGuin utopia. It's rather atypical for one though: while everyone is well fed and cared for, homophobia and sexism are minimized, there seems to be no police or army, and they are In Harmony with Nature, there's still superstition, division, occasional violence, and prejudice. The argument seems to be that while a perfect society might be impossible, there's still ways to create a significantly better society.
  • The galaxy-spanning civilization, enabled by sufficiently advanced technology, known only as The Culture which appears in Iain M. Banks's novels is very Utopian, at least internally. The majority of the novels are set on the fringes, concerning the Culture's covert operations within other societies, which are portrayed as very morally ambiguous, but mostly considered justified, as their aim is to make all civilizations as Utopian as their own.
  • Oz under the rule of Ozma is more or less a utopia; all problems come from either outside (particularly the Nome King) or from Oz's fringes.
  • The culture of the good guys in the first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is a utopian one-with-nature form of communism. This works, because everyone has a "health-sense" that makes them sensitive to their environment so that it actively hurts them if a neighbor/rock/potted plant is starving, ill, or mentally disturbed.
  • The idea above is mercilessly spoofed in the Stanisław Lem short story "Altruizine" (from The Cyberiad). An idealistic alien robot clandestinely alters the human inhabitants of a planet to possess such a sense. After the ensuing chaos, the robot is found out and the humans show it their "gratitude" by crushing it into a cube and shooting it into space.
  • Heinlein was actually fond of deconstructing utopias. None of the societies he described are really utopian and the one in Starship Troopers is accepted by the masses simply because it works satisfactorily. It effectively deconstructs the utopia largely because of this and that the other methods of governing worked as well, though badly, and it is indicated that the society in the novel is just as faulty and came about largely because of the collapse of the previously existing systems, leaving no apparent better alternative.
  • Gradually subverted in Strugatsky Brothers's Noon Universe. While the early installments portrayed the world of the 22nd Century as a more-or-less straight-forward communist utopia, later novels began to subtly undermine this picture. Characters found themselves facing problems that clashed with their utopian mindset, the supposedly just government was revealed to be increasingly ruthless and duplicitous and the 22nd century scarcity-free society was shown to breed a class of bored intellectuals who went to extreme lengths to make themselves feel useful.
  • A more straight example is in works of I. Efremov: the Andromeda Nebula, Heart of Serpent and Hour of the Bull all show us three consecutive eras of a communist utopia. However there is a Fridge Logic subversion once you realize parallels between Earth's society and that of Tormance, the dystopian society that's introduced in the third book.
  • The eponymous environmentalist utopia of Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia.
  • The titular setting of Dinotopia is based around a peaceful coexistence between dinosaurs and humans. Except for the carnosaurs in the Rainy Basin, who are convinced to stay put by dying herbivores making a pilgrimage there to be eaten. And that one guy nobody likes who rants about how Dinotopia doesn't mean dinosaur utopia-it really means "terrible place". He gets points for his Greek knowledge, but he's still a big jerk. But he does have a nice hat.
  • Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is set in a postsingular utopia called "The Bitchin Society".
  • In the Robert Sheckley short story Ticket to Tranai, the Earth-based protagonist has heard that the titular planet has no crime and no taxation. He finds out when he arrives that this is technically true, but only because there are no laws and the government employs muggers to take what it wants.
  • People in Stanisław Lem's world in The Futurological Congress could live life as they liked by taking pills which changed reality. Later the hero discovers that instead of changing reality, the pills merely change people's perception, so that they don't realize that they're living in a world ruined by overpopulation and on the verge of a new ice age.
  • In his Observation on the Spot, another Ijon Tichy vehicle, Tichy visits Lusania-a country on the planet mentioned in one of his earlier adventures, where everyone lives in a seemingly perfect Utopia brought in by hypertech nanomachines. Half of the book is devoted to deconstruction of the folly of its creators-from Tichy's standpoint he couldn't help but notice glaring holes in the logic and workings of their society. And vice versa.
  • Ray Bradbury's The Toynbee Convector provides a man-made utopia in Earth's future. In the present, Craig Bennett Stiles announced on a live TV broadcast that he had invented and successfully tested the first functional Time Machine. While the machine shorted out on its maiden voyage, he did succeed in traveling 100 years into the future, procuring artifacts and video footage from the future and returning. He announced that within the next century, mankind would rise above its darker nature and abolish the evils that have plagued civilization: poverty, war, prejudice, hatred. We would wipe out all diseases, colonize the Solar System and live in perfect harmony with nature and with each other. 100 years later, that future has indeed come to pass, and a reporter locates Stiles, still alive at 130, on the day that Stiles' younger self is set to arrive in the future. In the resulting interview, Stiles reveals that he never actually traveled through time; the time machine, artifacts and video footage were all created by a special-effects team. He believed that, at the end of the 20th century, the world was careening toward self-destruction, and that mankind needed a vision of a better world, even if he had to invent that vision himself. He created the lie, and the world chose to make it the truth.
  • L. Neil Smith's The Probability Broach has his protagonist accidentally crossing over from a dystopian United States collapsing under a Shadow Dictator government to an Alternate Universe where North America is a highly advanced libertarian society.
  • The setting of Sophie Renaudin's novel REAL belongs in the No Poverty category: Earth's resources are shared equally all over the world, The Metaverse allows people equal access to education, communication and entertainment, and political conflicts and war seem nonexistent. Since Humans Are Flawed, this allows the author to focus on the characters' personal problems, which range from internet addiction and Parental Abandonment to incurable deceases.
  • The Han Solo Trilogy: Alderaan has no pollution, little crime and no wars. Han is very dubious that it's true at first on being told this. However, after unsuccessfully trying to sell his glitterstim cargo there with no luck (as there isn't a market for narcotics on Alderaan) he admits it really is the case. Despite having very little crime though, the police still exist, as Han is discovered trying to sell his cargo by an Alderaanian undercover cop and warned off.
  • The Fifth Sacred Thing and its sequel City of Refuge by Starhawk both play with the trope. No one in the City goes hungry or homeless, it's environmentalist and egalitarian, crime is low, and everyone works to better the City. However, they're at the end of a climate apocalypse, the city is repeatedly struck by epidemics, and putting all their technology and effort into farming and building means they have none left for weapons when the fascist dystopia to the south comes to invade. Likewise, being shielded from violence and oppression means it's hard for them to relate to and help those who have, and they need a lot of help from Southern rebels to win the war against the fascist government.
  • The model in "A Model Life" is a perfect society of pre-chosen people who don't engage in violence or cruelty. James finds it utterly miserable, no matter what he tries to do. This is subverted; the model isn't even real, but an elaborate therapy scheme.
  • 2150 A.D. (1971) is about Jon Lake, whose dreams take him 176 years into the future. Society there is mostly automated by machines and people spend their days expanding their "macro awareness". The members of this "macro society" say they have to reach Jon through his dreams, when he is most accessible. Jon begins to spend more and more of his time dreaming, escaping the world where he is a crippled war veteran studying for his doctorate in Psychology.
  • Played surprisingly straight in Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion stories. The utopia is Tanelorn. Born from the dreams of humanity's desire for peace and freedom from the war between Chaos and Law, it's a city that no god or tyrant controls. Warriors who find their way there can eventually overcome their traumas and do whatever hobby or life-calling (so long as it doesn't harm others) they want. The only person that never found peace in Tanelorn was Elric of Melnibone.
  • Redfern Jon Barrett's Proud Pink Sky is set in the world's first gay state and plays with the genre, combining utopian and dystopian elements to create a work of 'ambitopia'.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Fox reality show "Utopia" has a group of people in an area cut off from society with no rules and a very limited number of resources to start with, trying to create a Utopian society, and seeing what they have in a year.
  • Doctor Who had an episode actually called "Utopia", where it was a fabled respite from the horrors of a dying Universe. It constantly broadcast the message "Come to Utopia" on a loop, inspiring hope for anyone who was listening. The last humans spend the episode trying to reach it, finally setting off in a rocket by the end. However, there was no Utopia, or at least the last humans did not get to it. The Master, who was their leader in his previous, amnesiac form, finds them floating in space. They had converted themselves, using parts from the ship, into robotic Psychopathic Manchild cyborg kids who take joy in killing. The Master then brings the depressed psychotic masses to modern Earth.
  • Star Trek's Federation is a utopian setting, which is probably why they have to have so many Negative Space Wedgies and malfunctioning Phlebotinum.
    • The United Federation of Planets is said to be Gene Roddenberry's idea of "utopia"-no poverty, disease, or war exists on the Earth of the 24th century. Deep Space Nine, though, pokes some pretty big holes in that idealistic view, with terrorism, war, and a 'secret police' cabal that will do anything to ensure that everyone is safe and sound.
    • Given the replicator along with other high technologies (such as in medicine), there is some justification for the end of poverty and disease, but war obviously is still around. It would also make sense for humans to pull together after the Third World War and first contact with the Vulcans. Still, there are clear problems-for one, the implications of many technologies are barely touched upon-and it hardly justifies the Planet of Hats thing.
    • War does not exist internally within the Federation, though it is a problem that the Federation tends to have with neighboring powers. Given the Federation's expansion and the availability of entire new planets for colonization, it is not surprising that many social issues are simply gone. No Federation race has to cram their entire population onto just one world if they do not want to. Thus common problems in future settings, such as overpopulated mega cities are just not present because anybody that wants more open space can move to a less densely populated colony (overpopulation also seems to be prevented by contraceptive injections mentioned in a couple episodes).
    • Also, while the actual member worlds of the Federation are practically utopian the same can't always be said for the outer colonies. This is especially true of colonies that border antagonistic empires like the Cardassian Union, leading to paramilitary organizations like the Maquis.
  • In the pilot of Sliders, Quinn is visited by his double who says that he visited a Utopian world "Where no one was afraid".

    Music 
  • Doctor Steel's stated goal is to remake the world into a Utopian Playland where having fun is the first priority.
  • Deconstructed in "Nothing But Flowers" by Talking Heads, where the singer describes an idyllic world... and is clearly bored.
    This was a parking lot
    Now there's nothing but flowers!
    If this is Paradise
    I wish I had a lawn mower!
  • Subverted in "Paradise" by Within Temptation. Though the singers' home is explicitly not a paradise, it's still their home.
  • The big plan behind the plot of Scanner's Concept Album Hypertrace is to build a galaxy-spanning utopia called Terrion.
  • The Evillious Chronicles by mothy frequently involves characters either discussing the concept or attempting to achieve it, often in the process providing a Deconstruction of what it means to have a utopia and how to get one (the Clockwork Lullaby song series in particular features a set of characters trying to achieve utopia by collecting seven demons of sin, with others rightfully skeptical of the results that would produce.)
  • Imagine by John Lennon, paints the picture of a communist and irreligious utopia (as usual, this will not sound good to all).
  • A couple of songs by Scatman John are centered around some place called "Scatland", a ideal world while there's no corruption or discrimination, only peace and understanding.

    Religion 
  • According to The Bible, the whole world will become a Utopia After the End. The Garden of Eden was also portrayed as utopian, though in both cases details are scant. That was before the Fall in any case.
  • The good afterlife described by most religions is a definite example of this trope, often fulfilling the need for everyone to get along by restricting entry to believers only and/or involving them being enlightened/spiritually transformed, so petty human squabbling (and physical needs) don't exist anymore.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In Lancer, Union's Third Committee is trying very hard to be a utopia, and some of its core worlds are close enough to post-scarcity that they've abolished money. Their primary obstacle is that many planets aren't willing to trust them due to the fascist history of the Second Committee. Union is also unwilling to intervene on non-member planets except in the most grievous violations of human rights, since bringing utopia through force or colonialism would compromise their ideals.
  • In Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40,000 Horus Heresy novel Legion, members of the Alpha Legion describe the Emperor's plan as utopian and therefore impractical-although stating they will support him fully.
  • The Ancient Martians from Rocket Age had a society where nearly every citizen was living a life of luxury, entirely supported by automated machines. Deconstructed however, since as very few Ancients were actually required to be productive or creative they became easy pickings for Erisian raiders.

    Video Games 
  • Deconstructed in Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker. There was once an alien civilization known as the Plenty who eventually eliminated everything that caused sorrow and strife. There was no death, war, sickness, hunger, or pain. They lived in fields of beauty in joy and peace. But eventually, they realized that they no longer had anything to strive for in life, that joy lost its savor without sorrow. Having grown apathetic with their perfect lives, the Plenty eventually created a means to commit mass suicide.
  • The Rayman games take place in such a world, when it isn't being invaded or attacked. This is mostly clear in the beginning of the first game.
  • This is Rolento Schugerg's entire reason for joining the Street Fighter tournament more or less. He claims to want to build the perfect nation, except, his idea of Utopia is more uhh...totalitarian.
  • The setting of Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising until the beginning.
  • Iron Helix: The backstory in the manual states that Earth has "solved its problems of disease and prejudice" by the time of the game.
  • Dream Land of the Kirby series is this when not in danger, as the land is often described as a happy-go-lucky world "famous for peace and quiet". As is said in Kirby's Epic Yarn: "It's the perfect little land... If you like that sort of thing."
  • Crying Suns: Deconstructed. The Empire is a Utopia, with the Emperor Scientist Oberon inventing the positronic chips and early AI that made the construction of OMNIs possible. OMNIs proceeded to take over every aspect of society, leaving humans to do nothing except fight wars and enjoy themselves. This led to cults that worshipped OMNIs as gods springing up, and the vast mass of humanity sliding into a deep existential depression at their own obsolesence that could only be treated with a debilitating and highly addictive drug. And, of course, when the OMNIs went offline, The Empire collapsed entirely within a few months.

    Web Original 
  • Angelnetted worlds in Orion's Arm are essentially utopian. Within the angelnet you cannot be physically harmed, psychologically harmed, have your memeset (perception of reality) interfered with or have your rights violated. However the AI Gods are still the "iron fist in a velvet glove" so there isn't any real freedom, not that you'd ever know.
  • The problems with writing or even imagining actual utopias is discussed in this Less Wrong article.
  • This may be the future at the end of the Chaos Timeline.
  • The Union of American Socialist Republics in the alternate history series Reds!: A Revolutionary Timeline is a deconstruction of much of the tropes of utopia. Is life in the UASR better? Perhaps. Is it very different? Absolutely. The author's seem to take a differentiating approach with this question. While communism is often seen as a utopian ideology, and the UASR has many of the facets of utopia (free love, classless society, great freedoms), this comes at a cost that people socialized to live in a capitalist, democratic republic might find quite uncomfortable, such as very great social pressures to participate in political and social life, and other duties that don't gel well with an individualistic society. The cultural and social values that developed over a century of tremendous divergence, revolution and the like are very much alien.
  • An odd case in 17776: humanity's achieved all its goals, gotten past war and disease, and even (somehow) achieved immortality...except now they're bored. With a lack of purpose in life, recreation (especially football) keeps them going.
  • Twilight Mirage — 4th season of Friends at the Table is explicitly described as "utopia in decline", but utopia nonetheless.
  • SCP Foundation has a few.
    • SCP-4005 is a lamp that grants visions of this kind of place, a city that embodies the perfect place for anyone who views it. The city has every enviroment and neighbourhood imagineable, with green spaces large enough that those who don't want to never have to see a building. Those who see the visions (which eventually include all of humanity) are overcome with the desire to go on a pilgrimage to the city, reaching it through portals that appear only to them in places that are emotionally significant. At the center of the city is the humble palace of an emir from Marrakesh, the man who commissioned the lamp's creation as a way for him to reach the fabled land of China where all things beautiful come from. The article ends with all of humanity leaving on pilgrimage, and it's heavily implied that the city is real.
    • SCP-6001 is an alternate universe where the SCP Foundation, the GOC, the Serpent's Hand, the Mekhanites and Sarkites, the Chaos Insurgency, and every other anomalous organization joined together to become a world government, bringing about world peace. The anomalous is common knowledge, and anomalous objects are used in a way to benefit people. Sapient items are also included in that, and treated in a humane way that lets them be whatever they want to be. SCP-682, who has always hated humanity, has even turned docile, calling us "No longer disgusting".
  • Existential Comics: Thomas More's Utopia (along with utopias generally) is deconstructed through pointing out both some appealing and unappealing aspects in his, then noting they always seem to be bland places which appeal most to the author themselves rather than anyone else.

    Western Animation 
  • Duckman: "The Gripes of Wrath" has Duckman accidentally cause a utopian society when Loretta, a supercomputer, overhears him ask "How come they can put a man on the moon but they can't make a deodorant that works past lunch?" Loretta takes over the world and solves all of life's little problems. Shoelaces stay tied, pop tops never break off, and lawnmowers always start at the very first pull. This causes services to be more efficient, people become happier and more productive, and they start treating each other with kindness. However, it quickly devolves into a dystopian world, and things only go back to normal once Duckman destroys Loretta with a Logic Bomb about how people need to be unhappy in order to be happy.
  • Futurama has a setting which has a distinct mix of utopian and dystopian themes.
  • Time Squad: A Cartoon Network series involving a time cop, a 21st century orphan, and a former robot diplomat who routinely back in time to set the changes of history on the right path. When not going time traveling, the three often hang out in their present time (the year 100,000,000 C.E.) on their spaceship near the Earth, which is referred in dialogue as a peaceful utopia where there are no longer any problems to solve (hence the reason for them making sure history stays on track, because otherwise their utopia could be ruined). All nations of the world have merged into one, and, according to the time cop, Tuddrussel, there are "no wars, no pollution, and bacon is good for your heart."
  • Lady Land in Gandahar is in perfect harmony with nature until destruction comes.
  • On Fairly OddParents, Timmy manages to get Cosmo off the hook for sinking Atlantis (9 TIMES!) by reminding the Atlanteans that because of Cosmo, they now live in a clean undersea utopia without bullies, pollution, or worse, terrible movies!
  • Zaofu from The Legend of Korra. It's effectively portrayed as the ideal civilisation, with innovation, freedom and self-perfection being key but not sacrificing security and commonwealth like many libertarian dystopias. It's so perfect, in fact, that the final antagonist of the series, Kuvira, tried to model the Earth Empire after it, with mixed results. It's also achieved in a fairly realistic fashion too, and while things are good for the citizens, it has a grim side in that it siphons resources away from the rest of the Earth Nation.


Alternative Title(s): Straw Utopia

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