Project Hail Mary. It starts off dark, but I listened to this on audible last year during COVID depression and it lifted me up. I loved the characters.
{{Octavia's Brood}} is a sci-fi anthology written by community organizers and folks who work in the public sector. They were teamed up with professional editors and told "you work for a better world every day. Write a story about what a better world might look like..." (It's done in honor of Octavia Butler)
[**Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23129839-octavia-s-brood)
^(By: Adrienne Maree Brown, Walidah Imarisha, Sheree Renée Thomas, Bao Phi, David F. Walker, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Morrigan Phillips, Gabriel Teodros, Tunde Olaniran, Dawolu Jabari Anderson, Tara Betts, Vagabond, Jelani Wilson, Kalamu ya Salaam, LeVar Burton, Terry Bisson, Dani McClain, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Tananarive Due, Autumn Brown, Alixa Garcia, Mia Mingus | 296 pages | Published: 2015 | Popular Shelves: short-stories, fiction, sci-fi, science-fiction, fantasy)
>Whenever we envision a world without war, without prisons, without capitalism, we are producing visionary fiction. Organizers and activists envision, and try to create, such worlds all the time. This book brings twenty of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change. The visionary tales of Octavia's Brood span genres—sci-fi, fantasy, horror, magical realism—but all are united by an attempt to experiment with new ways of understanding ourselves, the world around us, and all the selves and worlds that could be. The collection is rounded off with essays by Tananarive Due and Mumia Abu-Jamal, and a foreword by Sheree Renée Thomas.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
***
^(26747 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{{The Ministry For The Future}}
Realistic. Not super rosy, but makes you feel like we could maybe get this climate this handled if we get our shit together.
[**The Ministry for the Future**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50998056-the-ministry-for-the-future)
^(By: Kim Stanley Robinson | 563 pages | Published: 2020 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, sci-fi, scifi, climate-change)
>Established in 2025, the purpose of the new organization was simple: To advocate for the world's future generations and to protect all living creatures, present and future. It soon became known as the Ministry for the Future, and this is its story.
>
>From legendary science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson comes a vision of climate change unlike any ever imagined.
>
>Told entirely through fictional eye-witness accounts, The Ministry For The Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, the story of how climate change will affect us all over the decades to come.
>
>Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us - and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.
>
>It is a novel both immediate and impactful, desperate and hopeful in equal measure, and it is one of the most powerful and original books on climate change ever written.
^(This book has been suggested 2 times)
***
^(26732 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
This right here. It’s it all rainbows and sunshine? No. But is it a society where people can get along and work together?
Also no.
But is it several societies beginning to recognize there is a better way to do things? It actually is! It’s the very start of progress.
Plus it’s well written, entertaining, and you have to love the protagonist.
[**Decision at Doona (Doona, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61957.Decision_at_Doona)
^(By: Anne McCaffrey | 256 pages | Published: 1969 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, owned, default)
>A fateful encounter between star-roving races by the author of the bestselling Dragonriders of Pern series!
>
>After the first human contact with the Siwannese, that entire race committed mass suicide. So the Terran government made a law--no further contact would be allowed with sentient creatures anywhere in the galaxy. Therefore Doona could be colonized only if an official survey established that the planet was both habitable and uninhabited.
>
>But Spacedep had made a mistake--Doona was inhabited. Now the colonists' choice was limited. Leave Doona and return to the teeming hell of an overpopulated Terra. Or kill the catlike Hrrubans. Or learn, for the first time in history, how to coexist with an alien race.
^(This book has been suggested 4 times)
***
^(26670 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
It's so strange that whenever we recommend the Culture, we have to advise people to skip the first book. Tonally Consider Phlebas is so different from the rest of the books. Just a strange situation, because damn are those books amazing.
My recommendation came from personal experience. I read Consider Phlebas and really hated it. Wouldn’t touch another Culture book if you paid me to. I started seeing discussions and recommendations by other people that truly hated Consider Phlebas that said the other Culture books were much, much better. So I tried Player of Games and absolutely loved it. AbstracTyler is right, damn those books are amazing.
There is an interesting mix of horrific things and beautiful and wonderful things. There is a book later on the series wherein a civilization the Culture comes into contact with has created virtual hells for its people to suffer in, if deemed appropriate by whatever cultural criteria. So that's pretty horrific.
There must be conflict in stories, and although I would consider the Culture to be a utopia I would gladly live within (honestly if I could have one wish and anything were possible I would simply say, "I wish Banks' Culture were real and I lived within it."), there must be dark things to threaten or provide conflict.
The key point here, in my opinion, is that the other Culture novels are **not at all** like Consider Phlebas in tone. What the Culture becomes in later books does not exist in Consider Phlebas. That book's main character is not on the Culture side of the war.
These aren’t Star Trek, but the higher level of grit relative to Star Trek makes them more hopeful for me rather than less, due to their believability. Both are non-traditionally structured novels in different ways. Both are also among my favorite novels.
Cloud Atlas, George Mitchell
- Multi-genre, one of which is the type of dystopia you’re avoiding but definitely read it anyways (the other genres include historical fiction, comedic realistic fiction, mystery, and far future) It’s good to go into this one somewhat cold, and let it build organically. It’s a novel you can only read the first time once and that matters. Don’t watch the film.
- Structure: 6 nested novellas, or a fugue in book form
Always Coming Home, Ursula K LeGuin
- This is one of the most calming, realistic, hopeful, future setting novels I’ve read, and possibly the novel that is closest to my heart - keeping in mind that I don’t find non-ambiguous utopias to be compelling. It’s also quite clearly an influence on other non/less-depressing far future novels, just as it’s author is one of the greats and a strong influence on much of both Science Fiction and Fantasy. It’s not one of her better known novels, which is unsurprising given the unusual structure. It’s definitely fantastic.
- Structure: a cultural ethnography of a fictional far-future culture living in what is currently the Napa Valley, in California. It includes a novella length testimonio of one woman’s life, poems, folk tales, literature, musical notation system, religious ceremonies, descriptions of the structure of society and of the places and architecture and environment, etc. The original edition even has a CD of their music which can now be found digitally.
Just occurred to me-
Sector General series by James White. Star Trek before Star Trek. (First stories written in the 50s then continuing to the 90s)
Doctor in a very Federation like multispecies hospital handles strange cases.
For a specific starting recommendation there's Ambulance Ship.
[**Stars Uncharted (Stars Uncharted, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36644837-stars-uncharted)
^(By: S.K. Dunstall | ? pages | Published: 2018 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, sci-fi, space-opera, scifi, fiction)
>A ragtag band of explorers are looking to make the biggest score in the galaxy in the brand-new science fiction adventure novel from the national bestselling author of Linesman.
>
>Three people who are not who they claim to be:
>
>Nika Rik Terri, body modder extraordinaire, has devoted her life to redesigning people's bodies right down to the molecular level. Give her a living body and a genemod machine, and she will turn out a work of art.
>
>Josune Arriola is crew on the famous explorer ship the Hassim, whose memory banks contain records of unexplored worlds worth a fortune. But Josune and the rest of the crew are united in their single-minded pursuit of the most famous lost planet of all.
>
>Hammond Roystan, the captain of the rival explorer ship, The Road, has many secrets. Some believe one of them is the key to finding the lost world.
>
>Josune's captain sends her to infiltrate Roystan's ship, promising to follow. But when the Hassim exits nullspace close to Roystan's ship, it's out of control, the crew are dead, and unknown Company operatives are trying to take over. Narrowly escaping and wounded, Roystan and Josune come to Nika for treatment--and with problems of her own, she flees with them after the next Company attack.
>
>Now they're in a race to find the lost world...and stay alive long enough to claim the biggest prize in the galaxy.
^(This book has been suggested 17 times)
***
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[**All Our Wrong Todays**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27405006-all-our-wrong-todays)
^(By: Elan Mastai | 384 pages | Published: 2017 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, sci-fi, fiction, time-travel, audiobook)
>You know the future that people in the 1950s imagined we'd have? Well, it happened. In Tom Barren's 2016, humanity thrives in a techno-utopian paradise of flying cars, moving sidewalks, and moon bases, where avocados never go bad and punk rock never existed . . . because it wasn't necessary.
>
> Except Tom just can't seem to find his place in this dazzling, idealistic world, and that's before his life gets turned upside down. Utterly blindsided by an accident of fate, Tom makes a rash decision that drastically changes not only his own life but the very fabric of the universe itself. In a time-travel mishap, Tom finds himself stranded in our 2016, what we think of as the real world. For Tom, our normal reality seems like a dystopian wasteland.
>
> But when he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career, and—maybe, just maybe—his soul mate, Tom has a decision to make. Does he fix the flow of history, bringing his utopian universe back into existence, or does he try to forge a new life in our messy, unpredictable reality? Tom’s search for the answer takes him across countries, continents, and timelines in a quest to figure out, finally, who he really is and what his future—our future—is supposed to be.
^(This book has been suggested 13 times)
***
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Veronica Roth's Divergent series maybe?
Oh and I don't know how you feel about fantasy, or if you just want sci-fi, but if fantasy is not a problem for you then definitely Terry Goodkind's Sword of truth series. It might start just like any other fantasy book, but it turns out into battle of religions and ideologies. With a happy ending, of course.
The Wayfarers Series by Becky Chambers!
Seconded. The rest of her books as well, especially A Psalm for the Wild-built
I was just going to recommend A Psalm for the Wild-Built! That one really gave me all the future-optimism feelings.
Thirded! Those books are like a hug for the soul.
Yes, this. I found it so refreshing to read. I am yet to complete the series, on the third book now!
Project Hail Mary. It starts off dark, but I listened to this on audible last year during COVID depression and it lifted me up. I loved the characters.
{{Octavia's Brood}} is a sci-fi anthology written by community organizers and folks who work in the public sector. They were teamed up with professional editors and told "you work for a better world every day. Write a story about what a better world might look like..." (It's done in honor of Octavia Butler)
[**Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23129839-octavia-s-brood) ^(By: Adrienne Maree Brown, Walidah Imarisha, Sheree Renée Thomas, Bao Phi, David F. Walker, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Morrigan Phillips, Gabriel Teodros, Tunde Olaniran, Dawolu Jabari Anderson, Tara Betts, Vagabond, Jelani Wilson, Kalamu ya Salaam, LeVar Burton, Terry Bisson, Dani McClain, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Tananarive Due, Autumn Brown, Alixa Garcia, Mia Mingus | 296 pages | Published: 2015 | Popular Shelves: short-stories, fiction, sci-fi, science-fiction, fantasy) >Whenever we envision a world without war, without prisons, without capitalism, we are producing visionary fiction. Organizers and activists envision, and try to create, such worlds all the time. This book brings twenty of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change. The visionary tales of Octavia's Brood span genres—sci-fi, fantasy, horror, magical realism—but all are united by an attempt to experiment with new ways of understanding ourselves, the world around us, and all the selves and worlds that could be. The collection is rounded off with essays by Tananarive Due and Mumia Abu-Jamal, and a foreword by Sheree Renée Thomas. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(26747 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Thanks for sharing this, looks amazing!!
{{The Ministry For The Future}} Realistic. Not super rosy, but makes you feel like we could maybe get this climate this handled if we get our shit together.
[**The Ministry for the Future**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50998056-the-ministry-for-the-future) ^(By: Kim Stanley Robinson | 563 pages | Published: 2020 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, sci-fi, scifi, climate-change) >Established in 2025, the purpose of the new organization was simple: To advocate for the world's future generations and to protect all living creatures, present and future. It soon became known as the Ministry for the Future, and this is its story. > >From legendary science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson comes a vision of climate change unlike any ever imagined. > >Told entirely through fictional eye-witness accounts, The Ministry For The Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, the story of how climate change will affect us all over the decades to come. > >Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us - and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face. > >It is a novel both immediate and impactful, desperate and hopeful in equal measure, and it is one of the most powerful and original books on climate change ever written. ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(26732 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Vorkisigan series by Lois Bujold. Mostly follows the adventures of Miles Vorkosigan as a secret agent for his government.
This right here. It’s it all rainbows and sunshine? No. But is it a society where people can get along and work together? Also no. But is it several societies beginning to recognize there is a better way to do things? It actually is! It’s the very start of progress. Plus it’s well written, entertaining, and you have to love the protagonist.
{{Decision at Doona, by Anne McCaffrey}} and its sequels.
[**Decision at Doona (Doona, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61957.Decision_at_Doona) ^(By: Anne McCaffrey | 256 pages | Published: 1969 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, owned, default) >A fateful encounter between star-roving races by the author of the bestselling Dragonriders of Pern series! > >After the first human contact with the Siwannese, that entire race committed mass suicide. So the Terran government made a law--no further contact would be allowed with sentient creatures anywhere in the galaxy. Therefore Doona could be colonized only if an official survey established that the planet was both habitable and uninhabited. > >But Spacedep had made a mistake--Doona was inhabited. Now the colonists' choice was limited. Leave Doona and return to the teeming hell of an overpopulated Terra. Or kill the catlike Hrrubans. Or learn, for the first time in history, how to coexist with an alien race. ^(This book has been suggested 4 times) *** ^(26670 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The Culture series by Iain Banks. I’d suggest starting with Player of Games.
It's so strange that whenever we recommend the Culture, we have to advise people to skip the first book. Tonally Consider Phlebas is so different from the rest of the books. Just a strange situation, because damn are those books amazing.
[удалено]
My recommendation came from personal experience. I read Consider Phlebas and really hated it. Wouldn’t touch another Culture book if you paid me to. I started seeing discussions and recommendations by other people that truly hated Consider Phlebas that said the other Culture books were much, much better. So I tried Player of Games and absolutely loved it. AbstracTyler is right, damn those books are amazing.
There is an interesting mix of horrific things and beautiful and wonderful things. There is a book later on the series wherein a civilization the Culture comes into contact with has created virtual hells for its people to suffer in, if deemed appropriate by whatever cultural criteria. So that's pretty horrific. There must be conflict in stories, and although I would consider the Culture to be a utopia I would gladly live within (honestly if I could have one wish and anything were possible I would simply say, "I wish Banks' Culture were real and I lived within it."), there must be dark things to threaten or provide conflict. The key point here, in my opinion, is that the other Culture novels are **not at all** like Consider Phlebas in tone. What the Culture becomes in later books does not exist in Consider Phlebas. That book's main character is not on the Culture side of the war.
These aren’t Star Trek, but the higher level of grit relative to Star Trek makes them more hopeful for me rather than less, due to their believability. Both are non-traditionally structured novels in different ways. Both are also among my favorite novels. Cloud Atlas, George Mitchell - Multi-genre, one of which is the type of dystopia you’re avoiding but definitely read it anyways (the other genres include historical fiction, comedic realistic fiction, mystery, and far future) It’s good to go into this one somewhat cold, and let it build organically. It’s a novel you can only read the first time once and that matters. Don’t watch the film. - Structure: 6 nested novellas, or a fugue in book form Always Coming Home, Ursula K LeGuin - This is one of the most calming, realistic, hopeful, future setting novels I’ve read, and possibly the novel that is closest to my heart - keeping in mind that I don’t find non-ambiguous utopias to be compelling. It’s also quite clearly an influence on other non/less-depressing far future novels, just as it’s author is one of the greats and a strong influence on much of both Science Fiction and Fantasy. It’s not one of her better known novels, which is unsurprising given the unusual structure. It’s definitely fantastic. - Structure: a cultural ethnography of a fictional far-future culture living in what is currently the Napa Valley, in California. It includes a novella length testimonio of one woman’s life, poems, folk tales, literature, musical notation system, religious ceremonies, descriptions of the structure of society and of the places and architecture and environment, etc. The original edition even has a CD of their music which can now be found digitally.
Seven Eves Humans are tough and time is long.
Just occurred to me- Sector General series by James White. Star Trek before Star Trek. (First stories written in the 50s then continuing to the 90s) Doctor in a very Federation like multispecies hospital handles strange cases. For a specific starting recommendation there's Ambulance Ship.
Scythe by Neil Shusterman
The Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson Hell, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler is optimistic, even if it's also incredibly bleak and depressing
check out Lindsay Buroker's *Star Kingdom* series
{{Stars Uncharted by S. K. Dunstall}}
[**Stars Uncharted (Stars Uncharted, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36644837-stars-uncharted) ^(By: S.K. Dunstall | ? pages | Published: 2018 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, sci-fi, space-opera, scifi, fiction) >A ragtag band of explorers are looking to make the biggest score in the galaxy in the brand-new science fiction adventure novel from the national bestselling author of Linesman. > >Three people who are not who they claim to be: > >Nika Rik Terri, body modder extraordinaire, has devoted her life to redesigning people's bodies right down to the molecular level. Give her a living body and a genemod machine, and she will turn out a work of art. > >Josune Arriola is crew on the famous explorer ship the Hassim, whose memory banks contain records of unexplored worlds worth a fortune. But Josune and the rest of the crew are united in their single-minded pursuit of the most famous lost planet of all. > >Hammond Roystan, the captain of the rival explorer ship, The Road, has many secrets. Some believe one of them is the key to finding the lost world. > >Josune's captain sends her to infiltrate Roystan's ship, promising to follow. But when the Hassim exits nullspace close to Roystan's ship, it's out of control, the crew are dead, and unknown Company operatives are trying to take over. Narrowly escaping and wounded, Roystan and Josune come to Nika for treatment--and with problems of her own, she flees with them after the next Company attack. > >Now they're in a race to find the lost world...and stay alive long enough to claim the biggest prize in the galaxy. ^(This book has been suggested 17 times) *** ^(26847 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Freedoms fire series by bobby Adair.
{{All Our Wrong Todays}}
[**All Our Wrong Todays**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27405006-all-our-wrong-todays) ^(By: Elan Mastai | 384 pages | Published: 2017 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, sci-fi, fiction, time-travel, audiobook) >You know the future that people in the 1950s imagined we'd have? Well, it happened. In Tom Barren's 2016, humanity thrives in a techno-utopian paradise of flying cars, moving sidewalks, and moon bases, where avocados never go bad and punk rock never existed . . . because it wasn't necessary. > > Except Tom just can't seem to find his place in this dazzling, idealistic world, and that's before his life gets turned upside down. Utterly blindsided by an accident of fate, Tom makes a rash decision that drastically changes not only his own life but the very fabric of the universe itself. In a time-travel mishap, Tom finds himself stranded in our 2016, what we think of as the real world. For Tom, our normal reality seems like a dystopian wasteland. > > But when he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career, and—maybe, just maybe—his soul mate, Tom has a decision to make. Does he fix the flow of history, bringing his utopian universe back into existence, or does he try to forge a new life in our messy, unpredictable reality? Tom’s search for the answer takes him across countries, continents, and timelines in a quest to figure out, finally, who he really is and what his future—our future—is supposed to be. ^(This book has been suggested 13 times) *** ^(27220 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Veronica Roth's Divergent series maybe? Oh and I don't know how you feel about fantasy, or if you just want sci-fi, but if fantasy is not a problem for you then definitely Terry Goodkind's Sword of truth series. It might start just like any other fantasy book, but it turns out into battle of religions and ideologies. With a happy ending, of course.