The Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M. Banks (2009)
The Culture is unobtainium-grade post-scarcity. The Minds and lesser AIs make computing and intelligence abundant beyond want. It also has effectively unlimited freedom of voice, freedom of exit, freedom of association, freedom to roam, and unlimited supplies of energy, matter, and manufactured goods. The only limits it can&#x27;t overcome are logical contradictions.<p>It has basically the same fictional technologies as Star Trek: powerful AI, FTL communication, FTL travel, replicators, transporters, and ridiculously abundant energy. But it is a far more wild and unrestrained What-If than Star Trek, which is probably why it has never been adapted to the screen. (An adaptation of <i>Consider Phlebas</i> was apparently a project for Amazon Prime for a while, but that was dropped.)<p>Consider for example transporter accidents&#x2F;paradoxes&#x2F;quirks. In Star Trek the question of identity and continuity going through the transporter is mostly shoved to the side, sometimes addressed in oblique character remarks, and occasionally rises to the forefront in an episode where somebody is duplicated or trapped in a transporter. Then the possibility of personal storage or duplication is set aside until the next rare occasion where it rises to Plot level.<p>In the Culture, having a molecular pattern backup of your body stored is <i>routine</i>, even among ordinary citizens. <i>Not</i> retaining a backup is unusual. Most Special Circumstances agents killed in the line of duty will be restored from backup, minus a few hours or days of memories. Only in wide scale conflicts, where backup data cannot be replicated outside the danger zone fast enough, are people in danger of involuntary permadeath. Star Trek has basically the same in-universe technology to make violent death reversible, but chooses not to pursue it, probably to avoid making things seem too weird to audiences.<p>But the future seen from the past <i>is</i> weird even when it includes only actually-realizable technologies. If you had a time machine and could show an audience of SF enthusiasts from 1940 a vision of things to come from technological change, 2010&#x27;s film <i>The Social Network</i> would be about the best you could do. It might also be baffling and off-putting to the sorts of people who liked SF stories of the time. Most people who enjoy SF prefer adventure stories with relatable characters and some plot-enabling or plot-driving tech gizmos. Visions of everything transfigured and rendered strange by technology or sheer cultural drift over time are  less popular.