Ecosystem of utopias?

[txenglish]

Hi all,

I'm writing my master's thesis about Paul McAuley's books, The Quiet War and Gardens of the Sun. Earth is struggling to recover from The Overturn - catastrophic environmental changes due to global warming, overpopulation, and various industrial sins. The Outers are people who left Earth over a century ago to establish settlements in the Outer System, primarily on moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Whereas the people of Earth, to repair the damage to the planet, have formed totalitarian megastates and a new religion based on a radical green ethos, the Outers have developed advanced genetic and ecological technologies that allow them to adapt and flourish in their harsh environments. The "quiet war" is orchestrated by militant governments on Earth who want to seize and exploit Outer technology. They gain popular support by fomenting prejudice against the posthuman Outers, on the premise that the way they've changed themselves genetically is an offense against God and Gaia.

MY QUESTION:

I'm defining a "new" category of utopian writing in which, rather than simply describing one utopia or comparing two or three utopias, the author sets up an entire array of utopias/dystopias that interact meaningfully, as an ecosystem of utopias. This is different from novels like Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed, which mentions numerous utopias/dystopias but only focuses on two in any kind of detail. McAuley describes at least eight different utopias in great detail (and others in somewhat less), and they interact and influence each other actively -- that interaction drives the plot. Furthermore, dystopias are not presented necessarily as evil entities to be defeated; rather, they serve the same purpose as do predators, vultures, volcanos, and hurricanes in an ecosystem. The author certainly displays preferences for some societies and principles above others, but he portrays all of his utopias as having both good and bad aspects. And again, the key is that all the societies are connected to each other, and the main concern is with balance, both within an individual society and across the entire biosphere.

Have you read any other books with an ecosystem of utopias like this? I've been reading and researching for a year and haven't seen anything quite like it. L. E. Modesitt Jr. comes the closest, both with his science fiction and with his Recluce series, but the ecosystem aspect is more of an underlying principle than something in the forefront.

I'd be EVER so grateful if you could give me any leads!

Thanks,
TXEnglish

 

[Tinsel]

I would have thought that a Utopia is something envisioned, rather than anything that can be made permanent. If you are looking for some type of balance between a group of Utopias, than you would have to accept that one Utopia should project itself upon another Utopia, however the starting point is continuously looking over it's shoulder, unless there is one singular Utopia as a result of Utopias evolving.

What you have to get at, is the subject of creation. Who created it for whom? or did the creator create it for themselves, and that is the difference between a world, and a Utopian world. Yet what we have is the former, and than our vision of Utopia for ourselves which is a singular Utopia (the world plus the vision of the new one).

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I've moved this thread to General Book Discussion, where you are more likely to find people who are willing and able to point you toward books of the kind you are searching for.

 

[digs]

This may be utterly off-topic and useless (sorry, I couldn't really think of any books I've read with a complex system of societies like that, unless you count something like Star Wars - and even then I don't know if it fits your criteria) but your description of McAuley's work struck me as having some very similar elements to Dan Simmons' Hyperion quartet.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS!

Simmons' humans have fled to various planets from a destroyed Earth and now fight a war against the 'Ousters', a branch of humanity that genetically modify themselves to live in harsher habitats (like space itself). In the last two books, in which the Catholic Church plays an important role, the idea of religion vs genetic manipulation is fairly central. Eventually we come to see that the Ousters live in a utopian society in harmony with nature, whereas the Church-dominated humans (from whose perspective we mainly see) are unknowingly living in a totalitarian dystopia.

Anyway, that's probably totally irrelevant - but maybe it'll help!

 

[Vertigo]

You have made me bump those McAuley books higher up my TBR list now, sounds like just my kind of theme.

Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space books features quite a few radically different groups that might fit your needs. Each main group of humanity is organised in very different ways both physically and socially but they must still interact and sometimes war against each other. On top of that he has one world with the "Glitter Band" (later Rust Band) which consists of literally thousands of independent habitats orbiting the planet. Each habitat has a specific kind of society that everyone has willingly entered into (at least originally). For example there is one with voluntary tyranny; a tiny aristoracy ruled by a king and the rest of the population are serfs, having voluntarily given up all rights to make decisions and thereby removing all "stress". Something like that. So each habitat can do absolutely anything it likes so long as it doesn't harm any other habitats. The book that goes into a few of these societies the deepest would be The Prefect I think.

You can read a summary of the four main groupings of humanity on these wiki pages Factions in Revelation Space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia but it doesn't go into the Glitter Band habitats there.

I would also agree with Digs in that the Hyperion series from Dan Simmons also covers quite a few distinct societies - I loved the tree starship people (I forget their name).

 

[Tinsel]

I would go with "City of God" by Saint Agustine. Actually I should too. I really should.

Maybe Teresa Edgerton will read it for me.