[jedharris]

Certainly one of my criteria for a utopia would be that some of the beings in it are engaged in intriguing or exciting activities with meaningful consequences. I'd require more than Special Circumstances to meet this criterion -- they are too small a piece of the total system.

In Player of Games we see a corner of a gaming culture which partly meets this criterion but it does not have meaningful consequences outside the gaming participants (unless you count the ways the Minds use it to manipulate Gurgeh).

Maybe by this criterion utopias are impossible, since the disruption caused by exciting activities with consequences conflict too much with the optimality of the society. But I don't think anyone now can prove this would be the case.