Optimistic Idealism. Dead? Boring?

[Homer Potvin]

Aren't all Utopias cosy?

Maybe every thing except one is perfect. Something minor but the opposite of warm blanket cozy. Like everyone's underwear itches them all the time?

I picture an enlightened proctor in a beard on a marble dais overlooking the Amalfi Coast. "Everything would be perfect if I didn't have to scratch my ass every five seconds."

 

[Trish]

Maybe every thing except one is perfect. Something minor but the opposite of warm blanket cozy. Like everyone's underwear itches them all the time?

I picture an enlightened proctor in a beard on a marble dais overlooking the Amalfi Coast. "Everything would be perfect if I didn't have to scratch my ass every five seconds."

I mean... there's always commando, isn't there?

 

[Homer Potvin]

Stumbled across this:

The guy cites Iain M Banks Culture series. Never read it... or any Banks. Any good?

 

[Madman Starryteller]

Stumbled across this:

The guy cites Iain M Banks Culture series. Never read it... or any Banks. Any good?

Ah yes, The Culture I think was mentioned earlier in the thread as well. That might come close to a utopia, or even be a utopia. I only read Consider Phlebas, and that only touched a little on The Culture. Consider Phlebas itself was pretty bleak at times. In the beginning the main character finds himself inside a dungeon that fills with shit as people have a feast above him and all the excrement from the toilets go into his dungeon...

 

[Rigor Mortis]

Back in deep mists of time, I read The Wasp Factory and The Bridge, both by Iain Banks without the M, which was reserved for sci-fi work, if I remember correctly. I do recall that I enjoyed both books but, about 40 years later, have no recollection of the The Bridge apart from the significance of a steering wheel. On the other hand, there's a scene in The Wasp Factory that still makes me squeamish when I think of it now, decades after reading.