Utopian and dystopian fiction
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Utopian fiction is the creation of an ideal world as the setting for a novel. Dystopian fiction is the opposite: creation of a nightmare world. Both are commonly found in science fiction novels and stories.
The word utopia was first used in this context by Thomas More in his work Utopia; literally it means "nowhere". In this work, More sets out a vision of an ideal society. Other examples include Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and B.F. Skinner's Walden Two. Gulliver's Travels may also be seen as a satirical utopia because it is actually a comment on the society the author lived in. The same goes for Erewhon by Samuel Butler.
Dystopias usually include elements of contemporary society and function as a warning against some modern trend. Often, the warning is against the threat of fascism in one form or another.
For examples of dystopias, see Yvgeny Zamiatin's We, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, Ayn Rand's Anthem and William Gibson's cyberpunk novels.
Subgenres
A subgenre of this is ecotopian fiction, where the author posits either a utopian or dystopian world revolving around environmental conservation or destruction. Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia was the first example of this, followed by Kim Stanley Robinson in his California trilogy. Robinson has also edited a collection of short ecotopian fiction, called Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias.
Another important subgenre is feminist utopias, for example Marge Piercy's novel Woman On the Edge of Time.