Science Fiction:

I wanted to learn about science fiction and lucked into a copy of David Pringle's "Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels; An English-language Selection 1949-1984." Nearly three years in (I have read other books besides science fiction) I'm down to the last fifteen. I realize the shortcomings of this list and am taking suggestions as to what contemporary books to read. But I can say I have read your favorite golden oldie SF.

There is a subdivision in science fiction for utopia and dsytopia books. It seems to have been easier for writers in the past to imagine utopias. Dystopias have become much more common, perhaps they fit our sense of the world better

...Recently I read Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backwards 2000-1887, published in 1888. Then I read Mack Reynold"s "Looking Backward, From the Year 2000" published in 1973. A month ago I had read Ursula Le Guin's "Dispossesed." The last two books came from Pringle's list.

...In Bellamy's popular book (people loved it way back when), the hypnotized hero, Julian West, is awaken over hundred years later to a nationalist (socialist) utopia where everyone works according to their ability in the corporate army and all their needs are met. His hero happily falls in love with the descendant of his fiancee. The mechanized and steam-powered world Bellamy imagined speaks more to steam punk than to prophecy.

...Reynold's hero, cured of heart disease after thirty years in the cryogenic chamber, is a stranger in a highly advanced world that is run by computers. Energy is limitless (how good is that!). But people speak a universal language he doesn't know. They even use the metric system! Education, not work, occupies these people. In case the reader doesn't notice the similarity to Bellamy's title, Reynolds used the same names for his characters. Only in this case Julian West does not live happily ever after.

...Ursula Le Guin's "The Dispossessed" also depicts a egalitarian utopia set in the far future with aliens, who are very much like us. Anarres was settled as a result of a labor revolt. There everyone works and has equal housing, food, (what little there is on this improvised world). Problems still creep in: conformity replaces creativity, people playing favorites, some taking more than their share. Shevek, a math genius and our hero, travels to the home world, Urras to share his mathematical discovery and learn from other scientists. Urras is a corrupt capitalistic society of excesses that somehow encourages discovery and invention. Shevek discovers he belongs to neither world.

...Science fiction writers often build new worlds, whether in the future or on other planets, but to imagine a plausible utopia has to be daunting. Man's own psychology gets in the way. And oh, yeah, there's that limitless energy problem to crack.