It's a full life, if a trifle banal

A brief discussion elsewhere about writing dystopia had me musing about happy-world stories and sad-world stories, what you lot preferred, and why.

Here is the ever-quotable Le Guin on the subject: "It is sad that so many stories that might offer a true vision settle for patriotic or religious platitude, technological miracle working, or wishful thinking, the writers not trying to imagine truth. The fashionably noir dystopia merely reverses the platitudes and uses acid instead of saccharine, while still evading engagement with human suffering and with genuine possibility" (2004: 219).

Are happy-world tales escapism? Do sad-world stories back out on the possibility for action and change? What do you like to read? Why?

[Poll #614661]

Le Guin, U. (2004) A War Without End. In: Le Guin, U., The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination. London: Shambhala Publications.