It's not a dystopia, which is a maximally negative state, but I also always found it pretty comical to call it utopian. A decent chunk of the stories has the r

It's not a dystopia, which is a maximally negative state, but I also always found it pretty comical to call it utopian. A decent chunk of the stories has the reader follow around Special Circumstances, which is effectively a sort of space CIA interfering in the affairs of other cultures. The entire plot of Player of Games, spoiler alert for people who haven't read it, is that both the protagonist of the story, as well as the reader by the narrator, have been mislead and used as a pawn to facilitate the overthrow of the government of another civilization which afterwards collapses into chaos. To me you can straight up read most of the books as satire on say, a Fukuyama-esque America of the late 20th century rather than a futuristic utopia.