“A pretty face may be enough to catch a man, but it takes character and good nature to hold him.”
Dreaming of a better world? Utopian books offer a glimpse into societies built on harmony, equality, and hope. While dystopian fiction often dominates the spotlight, utopian novels provide a refreshing alternative – imagining what life could look like if we humans genuinely thrived. From classic utopian literature to modern utopian fiction, these stories explore perfect societies, visionary communities, and hopeful futures. Whether you’re looking for timeless works that shape the genre or contemporary utopia book recommendations, join us at What We Reading for our list of thought-provoking tales, beautifully crafted worlds, and novels about utopia that challenge you to rethink what’s possible. Here are the best utopian books to read – perfect for anyone seeking a break from the bleak futures and a chance to escape into stories of hope, harmony, and endless possibilities.
Classic Utopias
Utopia – Thomas More
Kicking off our list of utopia books is Thomas More’s Utopia. Arguably his most famous and controversial work, More imagines a perfect island nation where thousands live in peace and harmony, men and women are both educated, and all property is communal. Through dialogue and correspondence between the protagonist Raphael Hythloday and his friends and contemporaries, More explores the theories behind war, political disagreements, social quarrels, and wealth distribution.
More’s Utopia imagines the day-to-day lives of those ordinary citizens enjoying freedom from fear, oppression, violence, and suffering. Originally published in Latin, contemporary copies of Utopia are a vision of an ideal world, a hugely enthralling satire of sixteenth-century Europe, and it remains one of the most influential works of utopian fiction ever since.
News From Nowhere – William Morris
News from Nowhere is the best-known prose work of William Morris and the only significant piece of English utopia penned between Thomas More and its publication in 1890. The novel describes the encounter between a visitor from the nineteenth century, William Guest, and a decentralised and human socialist future.
Set over a century after a revolutionary upheaval in 1952, these “Chapters from a Utopian Romance” recount his journey across London and up the Thames to Kelmscott Manor. Morris’ work is a rejection of state socialism and instead invites a transformation of the relationship between humanity and the natural world, helping to give it resonance with modern readers.
Feminist & Social Justice Utopias
Herland – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
What would happen if society was run by women? In Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman attempts to imagine the result.
When three American men discover a community of women living in perfect isolation in the Amazon, they decide there simply must be men somewhere. How could these women survive without men’s knowledge, strength, and experience, not to mention reproductive power? In fact, what they have unearthed is a civilisation free from disease, poverty, and the weight of tradition. All alone, these women have carved a society of calm and prosperity, a feminist utopia that dares to threaten the very concept of male superiority.
Woman On The Edge Of Time – Marge Piercy
Woman on the Edge of Time follows Connie Ramos, a working-class Puerto Rican woman living in 1970s New York City who struggles with poverty, sexism, and mental health challenges. After being unjustly institutionalised, Connie begins to experience vivid visions of two possible futures: one is a dystopian, authoritarian future marred by environmental collapse and social collapse; the other is a hopeful, egalitarian utopia characterised by gender equality, communal living, and respect for nature.
Through these visions, Connie explores themes of feminism, social justice, and ecological balance. She connects deeply with Luciente, a member of the utopian future, who embodies the possibilities of a world rebuilt on cooperation and compassion. Connie’s journey illustrates the stark contrasts between oppressive present realities and hopeful alternatives that radical social change can bring, helping to establish it as one of the most defining feminist utopian novels.
Eco-Utopias & Environmental Futures
The Ministry For The Future – Kim Stanley Robinson
Established in 2025, the purpose of the new organisation 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 Kim Stanley Robinson tells its story in her 2020 utopia novel.
Told entirely through fictional eyewitness 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 desolate, it’s not a post-apocalyptic tale, but introduces a future that is almost upon us – and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face. It is a story that is both immediate and powerful, desperate and hopeful in equal measure, and the perfect go-to if you’re looking for a contemporary utopia story.
Semiosis – Sue Burke
In this character-driven novel of first contact by Sue Burke, human survival hinges on a bizarre alliance. Only mutual communication can forge an alliance with the planet’s sentient species and prove that mammals are more than just mere tools.
Forced to land on a planet they aren’t prepared for, human colonists rely on their limited resources to survive. The planet provides a lush but inexplicable landscape – trees offer edible, addictive fruit one day and poison the next, while the ruins of an alien race are found entwined in the roots of a strange plant. Conflicts between generations arise as they struggle to understand one another and wrestle with an unknown alien intellect.
Hopepunk & Optimistic Speculative Fiction
Walkaway – Cory Doctorow
Hubert was too old to be at that Communist party. Yet, after watching the breakdown of modern society, he really has nowhere left to be – except amongst the dregs of a disaffected youth who party all night and heap scorn on the sheep they see on the morning commute. After falling in with Natalie, an ultra-rich heiress trying to escape the clutches of her repressive father, the two decide to give up fully on formal society- and walk away.
After all, now that anyone can design and print the basic necessities of life – food, clothing, shelter – from a computer, there seems to be no reason to toil with the system. And whilst it is still a dangerous world out there, when the pioneers walk away, more people soon join them. Then the walkaways uncover one thing the ultra-rich have never been able to buy: how to beat death. Fascinating, moving, and darkly humorous, Walkaway is a multi-generation sci-fi thriller about the wrenching challenges of the next century, and the very human people who will grapple with it.
The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet – Becky Chambers
Rosemary Harper doesn’t expect much when she joins the crew of the ageing Wayfarer. While the patched-up ship has seen better days, it offers her a chance to explore the far-flung corners of the galaxy and put some distance between her and the past. An introspective young woman who learned to keep to herself, she’s never met anyone remotely like the ship’s diverse crew, including Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot, chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks, and Ashby, their noble captain.
Life aboard the Wayfarer is chaotic and crazy – just like Rosemary wants. However, when they are given a job tunelling wormholes through to a distant planet, things become more hazardous. In the far reaches of space, the tiny Wayfarer crew will confront a host of unexpected mishaps and thrilling adventures that force them to depend on one another.
Check Out The Best Sci-Fi Books For Beginners
Always Coming Home – Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home is a major work of the imagination from one of America’s most acclaimed science fiction authors. A rich and complex interweaving of stories, poems, fables, artwork, and music, it completely immerses the reader in the culture of the Kesh, a peaceful people of the far future who inhabit a place known as the Valley on the Northern Pacific Coast. The author makes the inhabitants of the valley as familiar, as immediate, as wholly as our own friends and family.
Spiralling outward from the dramatic life story of a woman called Stone Telling, Le Guin’s Always Coming Home blends wry wit, deep insight, and extraordinary compassion into a compelling utopian vision of unity.
Check out this guide to Utopian Literature on our sister site, What We Writing!
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
