4 ideas
Two men sentenced to death for murder accept an offer to be launched into space as experimental subjects instead of facing execution. They return to Earth roughly three centuries later to find a society where machines supply food, comfort, and near-perpetual life without labor.
Human satisfaction comes from effort against resistance: working, striving, and overcoming need. A world that eliminates labor and want therefore does not fulfill people. It removes the activity through which they experience purpose, so perfect provision produces boredom and discontent rather than happiness.
Introduce a person formed in the old world of scarcity into an idealized future, and the future's hidden costs become visible. Displacement turns a description of paradise into an audit of what paradise has abolished.
The men escape execution only to face a subtler confinement: an existence with nothing to do and nothing to want. Freedom from death and toil does not amount to freedom. A life emptied of necessity can feel like a prolonged sentence, turning the prisoners' rescue into a different kind of imprisonment.