That said, I do agree that there's a necessary selection effect to make the books interesting, as the fundamental problem of writing about a good day in a utopia is that the writer's idea of what that even means is unlikely to sell any copies — so I think of these books in a similar vein to how others say that Asimov's robot books are a demonstration of all the ways that the premise (in the latter's case, the Three Laws) don't really work as well as one might hope.
As I say, what I hope for is the promise of The Culture, but I don't know how to get there… or even if one can.
