Anyways, on to the guts of the question. I think Orson Scott Card has put forward a wonderful world in the Worthing Saga. It puts forward an interesting and totally possible future, based around a drug that will put poeple into suspended animation. Your status and wealth defines the ratio of your sleep, five years down and one year up for example. The world is a metallic jungle, one giant city. But people can sign up, no questions asked, on a colonization ship. This gives a totally different environment, one where people are starting over. The choice is which you prefer, a political world full of intrigue, or a virgin world who needs cultivation to become tenable.

The way I see it, Worthing gives a traditional experience as well as room for innovation.

Mike Resnick (believe it was him) used virtual worlds in one of his stories as a way to escape to a simpler time — where he lost himself as his marriage disintegrated.

SF authors have already trampled through MMOs — and on the balance, haven’t had many good things to say about them.

I’ll see what I can come up with on your challenge.

Ironically, all of us running around in virtual fantasy worlds would have made good science fiction at some point in the past. Didn’t one of the Banks “Culture” book have a character who spent some time playing in a virtual world (as a pirate, if I recall right) only to tire of it and go off in search of something more meaningful?