Heinlein’s Starship Troopers world – book version, not movie version – would be my first choice. Something along the lines of Pipers “Fuzzy” series as a second choice. Trials where the degree of truth in a statement could be known has always fascinated me.
+7 or however many it is now
Very true. But that’s part of the joy of the place: it’s hugely varied. You have the potential for extravagant adventures…and the potential to avoid them completely and sip Margaritas on Sailmaker Beach.
(Or live on a houseboat and write mad poetry.)
The alternate-history near-past/near-future of 2001: A Space Odyssey also might be a nice place to live. I’d love to be a researcher in the AI field!
8 or 9, when life is this good you don’t need to count anymore, these should be a mind taking care of that sort of thing. So long as I can live in the Culture, not just in the Culture universe, because everywhere outside the Cultures sphere of influence seamed to pretty much suck giant donkey balls.
Definitely NOT in the DC or Marvel universe where it seems everyday some supervillain is trying to destroy the world or fight a superhero.
Even in Star Trek, while things like replicators would be cool, there is always the worry about giant space probes and alien cubes trying to destroy the Earth.
And transporter accidents and Holodeck safety protocol failures. Star Trek is possibly the least-reliably-safe, supposedly-safe universe.
One word: Dentistry.
Surprise! I would like to be living on Trantor founding the First and Second Foundations.
Tsk-tsk, Seldon. “Want to”? What… your psychohistory not working well enough for ya? Why don’t you tell us which one? 
Jack McDevitt’s Alex Benedict’s universe seems very pleasant. I think I’d be a bit bummed there weren’t more intelligent alien species though.
Arrakis, the desert planet, Dune
This one, or give me a copy of the Guide and a towel and let me hitchhike my way around the galaxy.
Okay, sell me on this. The only Culture book I’ve read is Consider Phlebas. I enjoyed it okay, but did not find it particularly compelling. It didn’t seem to be a very happy place to live.
Is this the same as the Priscilla Hutchins universe? The Engines of God, etc.?
If not…what is the first book in the Alex Benedict series?
(I’m rather fond of McDevitt. The Hutchins universe – Omega – is just a little too scary for me. And society and politics haven’t advanced there enough to keep up with technology. But, wow… “Omega” is just about the best “first contact” novel I’ve ever read.)
Consider Phelbas wasn’t about Culture citizens. Culture citizens have all of their material needs provided for (to a level that is quite opulent by our standards) without having to work, and they live as long as they want as healthy as they want. You can spend most or all of your time on leisure activities, making art, getting high, and getting laid. Their MMO virtual reality programs put any holodeck to shame. If none of that is fulfilling, you can join Contact, which is in large part a massive foreign aid corps that uplifts less advanced civilizations. Also, it’s possible to “sublime” to a higher plane of existence and become some sort of god-like energy being.
ETA: Yes, I pick The Culture, too.
…And another one for the Culture here…
Me too. +394 for the Culture.
Interestingly, most of the Culture books aren’t much about the Culture and instead describe the interactions of Contact and/or Special Circumstances with the non-Culture universe. I think Look to Windward maybe gives the best impression of what it’s like to live in the Culture and its primary internal hazard of insipid party conversations, and even that is only maybe a third of the book.
Excession gives some idea of what it might be like to be an AI ship mind in the Culture.
I’m in. Where do I sign?
As a fan of Lois McMaster Bujold’s “Vorkosiverse” – I like the idea of being a citizen of the Barrayaran Imperium, taking part in colonising that entity’s third and newest-annexed planet, Sergyar. Sergyar is a virgin, frontier world, scenically and biologically a bit like Earth, with strange and highly varied native fauna (something rather rare in Bujold’s universe). It attracts the adventurous, from the Imperium’s other two planets – Barrayar (the “parent” world), and Komarr. Things on Sergyar would be pleasantly “loose” and expansive; preferable for me, to the rather highly rigid and conventional, much-regulated, society of the former; and the unappealing environment of the latter – a physically toxic one, in which survival is possible only in hermetically-sealed “dome” settlements: attempted terraforming under way, but expected not to become viable for centuries.
TNG Era Federation. Easy.