Something by Asimov?
(THE GODS THEMSELVES, maybe?)
The Pacific Rdge by Kim Stanley Robinson
Good thoughts, but not quite right. Asimov is too old to engage the uninitiated and Robinson too complicated; a short story or novella would be better, I think. I should have been clearer; I want to use this in a history course to keep people from collapsing in despair and to offer some hope.
“Safe at Any Speed” by Larry Niven?
Heinlein wrote a story about a best-case scenario future, which features the President (a black woman) watching the launch of a laser-propulsion spacecraft. IIRC, the title was “Over the Rainbow”.
A women clearly based on Nichelle Nichols.
In retrospect, probably. He says that the President was an attractive actress, brought on as running mate by a (white male) Presidential candidate as a gimmick, and who surprised everyone by her competence when the President died of a heart attack. By the time I read it, Nichols was no longer the go-to example of an attractive black actress, but yeah, at the time it was written, she would have been.
I would enthusiastically recommend Heinlein’s “Juveniles!” Red Planet, The Rolling Stones, and Have Space Suit, Will Travel are the standouts imo. They were written for teenagers, but Heinlein didn’t dumb his material down. They reflect his generally optimistic tone, but still have plenty of interesting conflicts and dilemmas. In my opinion they’re the best things he ever wrote, and I enjoy them regularly as an adult.
A longer version was entitled “The Happy Days Ahead” and was in “Expanded Universe”.
I think what I’m looking for is a short story or novella, suitable to assign university students to read and reflect and write on in a week of a semester. It would focus on how a utopian society might actually work. And it would be a democratic utopia, one that stressed equality and freedom. As Gregory Claeys notes in his survey, Utopia: The History of an Idea, most utopias stress community, lack of hierarchy, and collective ownership, or versions that stress economic equality. As noted above, the only thing I’ve found that comes close is Eric Frank Russell, “And Then There Where None,” but surely there is something more recent?
The short story I mentioned above (When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis, a short story by Annalee Newitz.) might apply (and is available on line). There’s also “Cat Pictures, Please” (Cat Pictures Please by Naomi Kritzer : Clarkesworld Magazine – Science Fiction & Fantasy) or “Liberation Spectrum” Liberation spectrum | Salon.com
David Brin’s “Tank Farm Dynamo” is both hopeful and hard sf David Brin's Official Web Site: "Tank Farm Dynamo" (short story)
I’ll see what others I can think of.
“Robot and Crow” has its moments, but it’s more of an AI story than humans figuring out how to live in new ways story. That is, it’s not rooted in social conditions exactly, at least not in a way that points to the problems people face today. I’ll look at the others!
How about The Smartest Mob - Chapter 1 or Synthetic Serendipity - IEEE Spectrum
And after you have them read a story like that, have them read “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin so they can see that it’s not as easy to tell whether a society is a utopia.
I’m pretty sure that he’s already well aware of that story, since he specifically said “Not Le Guin”.
I’m enjoying the hell out of E. M. Foner’s interlaced series of stories about Union Station, a deliciously mixed bag of aliens on the ‘Tunnel Network’, and life aboard a sentient colony ship. No wars, light romance, some deep and interesting perspective on ‘human problems’. The sequence featuring gamers might be a good gateway drug for young adults… E. M. Foner Books In Order - EarthCent Series and Spin-offs
P.S. “The Smartest Mob” is by David Brin; “Synthetic Serendipity” is by Vernor Vinge.
You could try John Varley’s “Eight Worlds” series. “Steel Beach” is probably a good single-book start to that.
The book’s protagonist, Hildy Johnson, is a newspaper reporter, named after the male protagonist of the 1928 play and 1931 film The Front Page and the female protagonist of the 1940 film His Girl Friday (Hildy changes gender halfway through the book), who finds trouble beneath the surface of the near-utopian society run by the Central Computer. The Central Computer runs every aspect of every person’s life: it is the government, court, information source, and friend to every citizen.
This society is a “near-utopia” in that most people’s physical needs are well-met, but there’s still a lot of the usual, human, inter-personal problems. With the lead character being a reporter, we get kind of a tour-de-force among different aspects of the society, and how they all adapt differently to their situations.
Cory Doctorow’s “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” (available for free Download Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom For Free | Cory Doctorow's craphound.com) is a post scarcity utopian novel (and not terribly long)