It’s hard to write an interesting story about a collective.
The genre itself has to deal with individuals making choices and living with the consequences, which will to some extent causes stories to drift towards conservatism, even if they wouldn’t admit it.
An interesting, and I think correct, point. Nobody cares about the fate of the mass. Even in apocalyptic science fiction, where the world as we know it is destroyed, it was the lone survivor protagonist that was the story.
“It’s hard to write an interesting story about a collective.
The genre itself has to deal with individuals making choices and living with the consequences, which will to some extent causes stories to drift towards conservatism”
You’re basically describing “The Blithedale Romance,” the absolute classic of the commune stories (though not at all a sci-fi novel). It’s a good but not great book, written by a master who could aptly be described as conservative.