Utopian fiction

Utopian fiction is the creation of a ideal world, described as a utopia as the setting for a novel.

{discuss the origins of the word, which means "nowhere"}

{discuss the prime examples of such fiction, dating from Thomas More's Utopia, to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, to B.F. Skinner's Walden Two.}

{discuss the converse of this genre, the dystopia, which is more commonly found in science fiction circles. See Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World, any of William Gibson's novels, etc.}

A subgenre of this is 'ecotopian fiction,' where the author posits either a utopian or dystopian world based around environmental conservation/destruction or other ecological themes.

Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia (novel) was an early example of this, followed by Kim Stanley Robinson in his California trilogy. Robinson has also edited a collection of short ecotopian or eco-anarchist fiction, called appropriately, Future Primitive - The New Ecotopias, 1994.