Great Ring

Great Ring is cycle of novels, written by Russian writer Ivan Efremov. Novels in cycle (in in-world time order) are

• Туманность Андромеды (Andromeda Nebula a.k.a. Andromeda: A Space Age Tale) is a communism utopia, describing the guiding principles of the society and briefly noting a hard way to it.
• Сердце Змеи (The Snakes Heart or Cor Serpentis) is a novella describing the contact between an Earth's spaceship and that of an alien humanoid life form, but based on hydrogen fluoride, instead of hydrogen oxide (water) solutions.
• Час Быка (The Bulls Hour) is a totalitarian Dystopia. It describes mission to the planet colonized by humans, who escaped from Earth long before the current society was established.

Tropes used in Great Ring include:

• Absent Aliens: Averted. There are loads and loads of them. The only problem is that lack of reasonably cheap Faster-Than-Light Travel makes it's a pain in the ass to communicate with them.
• After the End: Hinted abouth the Earth's society in the first novel, explicitly said in the second.
• Alternate Continuity: Despite describing pretty much the same society on the Earth, as in othe books, the Cor Serpentis is explicitly a First Contact story and no Great Circle is ever mentioned.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: Only quite-slower-then-light (up to 0.8 c) travels in the first novel, near-light in the Cor Serpentis and full FTL (but still very complicated) in the Bull's Hour. All of them require very much effort.
• No Poverty: It's Utopia.
• Utopia: The Earth society itself.