The cities of science fiction are often cautionary tales. Whether the imaginary metropolis is part of a future Earth or on a distant planet, the city in question is often speaking to a cultural ill that threatens to turn our not-so-bad world into one where the buildings are dirty and the government probes you if you look at them wrong. The dystopia has seen renewed interest in recent years, as allegorical young adult novels have become favored blockbuster source material. There is another strain of fictional city that is much more rare at the multiplex: the utopia.
It makes sense that there are fewer dream cities in space than there are dystopias. Perfect cities don’t hold much dramatic potential, unless, of course, you have a villain blow them up. Space cities that provide the perfect habitat generally show up in science-fiction narratives as a brief glimmer, an oasis between dusty merchant towns where the lawless exchange goods and information and robotic evil empires are monitored by the police state. Let’s take a moment to honor the celestial cities that we wouldn’t mind living in as long as we had a promise from the Galactic Empire that they wouldn’t vaporize us. Here are some Space Cities We’d Like to Call Home.