None of these examples will be new to you, but maybe my viewpoint is? In one category I see the stories of Star Trek and The CoDominium, / The Mote In Gods Eye

None of these examples will be new to you, but maybe my viewpoint is? In one category I see the stories of Star Trek and The CoDominium, / The Mote In Gods Eye. Both sets of stories revolve around a militaristic society where, even though there are democratic societies on frontier planets and back on Earth, the only travel between worlds is governed by the ruling group of technocrats who importantly are the only ones with access to interplanetary travel. These aren’t closely tethered warships like we have today: Star Trek plots are notable for the authority, autonomy and power that individual captains and their cadre of officers have. It isn’t explored in depth but Mote implies the CoDominium, the ruling structure on Earth and other worlds, is organized the same way the space faring military is run. Societies with a large military running the country day-to-day are usually considered technocracies (contemporary Egypt, for example.) In Dune, the Navigators — a separate species evolved from humans — exert the same kind of authority over space travel. The fundamental access to other worlds is in the hands of their technocracy, though the other unevolved humans whose stories make up the main plot lines do so in traditional feudal empires. Maybe Navigators have their own ways of deciding how to run things that shows they are decidedly not technocrats, but to the extent that they control travel between worlds makes them technocrat overlords to everyone else. Space travel and society in Banks’s Culture novels is much more democratic. Individuals roam in their own ships and all different kinds of societal structures are free to exist in many species and places. However, the over-arching control is still in the hands of the benevolent Minds — sentient supercomputers with a moral code that still allows for some humans to be involved in decision making, but only those humans that have been selected for their elite knowledge and skills. While the Minds have all the power, the humans call a lot of the shots. Decision making by only the most learned and skilled is the hallmark of a technocracy.