Ecotopia

Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston
	File:Ecotopia cover 30th lowres.jpg 30th Anniversary Edition cover
Author	Ernest Callenbach
Language	English
Genre	Utopian novel
Publisher	Ernest Callenbach (first self-published as Banyan Tree Books) & Bantam Books (1977)
Publication date	1975
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	181 pp
ISBN	0553348477
OCLC	20169799
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 20
LC Class	PS3553.A424 E35 1990
Followed by	Ecotopia Emerging

Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston is the title of a seminal utopian novel by Ernest Callenbach, published in 1975. The society described in the book is one of the first ecological utopias and was influential on the counterculture, and the green movement in the 1970s and thereafter.

The book's context and background

The impressive, environmentally benign energy, homebuilding, and transportation technology described by Callenbach in Ecotopia was based on research findings published in such magazines as Scientific American. The author's story was woven using the fiber of technologies, lifestyles, folkways, and attitudes that were being reflected (from real-life experience) in the pages of, for example, the Whole Earth Catalog and its successor CoEvolution Quarterly, as well as being depicted in newspaper stories, novels and films. Callenbach's main ideas for Ecotopian values and practices were based on actual experimentation taking place in the American West. To draw an example, Callenbach's fictional Crick School was based upon Pinel School, an alternative school located outside Martinez, California, and attended for a time by his son.

The author’s Ecotopian concept does not reject high technology as long as it does not interfere with the social order and serves Ecotopian objectives, but members of his fictional society prefer to demonstrate a conscious selectivity of technology, so that not only human health and sanity might be preserved, but also social and ecological well being. Interestingly therefore, Callenbach’s story anticipated the development and liberal usage of videoconferencing.

During the 1970s when Ecotopia was written and published “many prominent counterculture and new left thinkers decried the consumption and overabundance that they perceived as characteristic of post-World War Two America^[1]”. The citizens of Ecotopia shared a common aim: they were looking for a balance between themselves and nature. They were “literally sick of bad air, chemicalized food, and lunatic advertising. They turned to politics because it was finally the only route to self-preservation.^[2]” In the mid-20th century as “firms grew in size and complexity citizens needed to know the market would still serve the interests for those it claimed to exist^[3]”. Callenbach’s Ecotopia targets the fact that many people did not feel that the market and the government were serving them in the way they wanted them to. This book was “a protest against consumerism and materialism, among other aspects of American life^[3]”.

The term "ecotopian fiction", as a sub-genre of science fiction and utopian fiction, refers to this book.

Plot summary

The book is set in 1999 (25 years in the future, as seen from 1974) and consists of the diary entries and reports of William Weston, a mainstream media reporter who is the first American proper to investigate Ecotopia, a newly formed country that broke from the USA in 1980. Prior to Weston's investigative reporting, most Americans had not been allowed to enter the new country, which is depicted as being on continual guard against revanchism. The new nation of Ecotopia consists of Northern California, Oregon and Washington; it is hinted that Southern California is a lost cause. The book is presented as a combination of narrative from Weston's diary and dispatches that he transmits to his publication, the mythical Times-Post.

Together with Weston (who at the beginning is curious about, but not particularly sympathetic to the Ecotopians), the reader learns about the Ecotopian transportation system and the preferred lifestyle that includes celebrating gender roles, official encouragement of maintaining racial segregation, discouraging monogamy, promoting sexual freedom. A distain for television is manifested by promoting popular communal combat "sport" events designed to end in bloodshed and even death. liberal cannabis use, as well as about energy production, building construction, a defense strategy focused both on developing a highly advanced arms industry while also maintaining hidden WMD within major US population centers. Education reform, and a holistic approach to medical care that may include a primary care giver performing oral sex on her patient as part of the treatment.

The narrative is told through both Weston's official cables back to the United States and through his diary which he keeps and later sends to his editor at the end of his assignment. These parallel narrative structures allow the reader to see how his internal reflections, as recorded in his diary, are reflected in his external pronouncements to his readers. Despite Weston's initial reservations, throughout the novel, Ecotopian citizens are characterized as clever, technologically resourceful and occasionally violent, but also socially responsible, patriotic and often inclined to work and live in racially segregated ethnic local team configurations. The novel concludes with Weston's finding himself enchanted by the Ecotopia regime and defects from the United States, immigrating to one of Ecotopia's promising white homelands in this new country.

Doomsday defense

One potential flaw in the plotline of Ecotopia is the unwillingness of many readers to believe that the remaining armed forces of the United States of America would refuse to take offensive action to reconquer the seceded new country. During the novel, it is explained that Ecotopia has installed hidden nuclear explosives within many major urban population centers on the United States' east coast, which could be set off in the event of any attack by the U.S.A. upon Ecotopia, and therefore the power elite of the United States is effectively deterred from taking serious steps of reconquest.

Impact

The importance of this book is not so much to be found in its literary form as in the lively imagination of an alternative and ecologically sound lifestyle on a greater scale, presented more or less realistically. It expressed on paper the dream of an alternative future held by many in the movements of the 1970s and later. Even the names of the two characters most reflective of their respective viewpoints - "Will West(on)", the representative for materialist American culture and "Vera Allwen" (= "Truth for All Time"), the President and spokeswoman for Ecotopia - suggest the degree to which the author intended the book to be a reflection of American ecological and cultural deficiencies. However, the name Weston could also be read as a reference to Julian West, the protagonist in the highly influential utopian novel Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy.

Worth mentioning is Callenbach's speculation on the roles of TV in his envisioned society. In some ways anticipating C-SPAN, which would first be broadcast in 1979, and reality television, which would not emerge as a fact for another two decades, the story mentions that the daily life of the legislature and some of that of the judicial courts is televised in Ecotopia, and even highly technical debates addressed the needs and desires of the viewers.

Another interesting feature in the novel is "print on demand" (POD) publishing. In the novel, customers could choose approved print media from a jukebox-like device that would then print and bind the book. In the 21st century, POD services such as Lulu.com that print, bind and ship books for customers who order on-line, have become commonplace.

In contrast to much of the Green movement in contemporary America with its preference for regulation, however, Callenbach's Ecotopia has relatively laissez-faire economic tendencies.

In 1981, Callenbach published Ecotopia Emerging, a multi-strand "prequel" suggesting how the sustainable nation of Ecotopia could have come into existence.

In 1990, Audio Renaissance released a partial dramatization of Ecotopia on audiocassettes in the form of recordings of a radio network broadcast (the Allied News Network replacing the Times-Post). The tape-recorded diaries of William Weston were read by the book's author, Ernest Callenbach. Weston's reports were read by veteran news reporter Edwin Newman.

Ecotopia is now required reading in a number of colleges (see NY Times article The Novel That Predicted Portland referenced below)

Reception

Ralph Nader felt that: "None of the happy conditions in Ecotopia are beyond the technical or resource reach of our society."^[4]

Quotes

...if you reflect on our change from thoughtless trash-tossing to virtually universal recycling, or from the past in which smokers didn't hesitate to blow smoke in anybody's face to our present restrictions on smoking in public places, it's clear that shared ideas about acceptable or desirable behavior can change markedly. Such changes occurred without anybody getting arrested in the dark of night. Further changes will come...

References to Ecotopia

In his 1981 book Nine Nations of North America, author Joel Garreau named one of his nations Ecotopia after Callenbach's book. Garreau's Ecotopia consists of Northern California, Western Oregon, Western Washington, coastal British Columbia, and southeastern Alaska and is one of the nine economic-cultural nations into which Garreau believed North America should be divided to correctly understand the true regional dynamics of the continent. This Ecotopia, like Callenbach's, is characterized culturally by its environmental sensibilities and focus on 'quality of life', and economically by its focus on resources such as hydropower and forestry.

Outside of the written word, Callenbach's "Ecotopia" novels have also inspired real change through its influence on the Cascadia movement.

Since 1989 in Europe an annual gathering is organised under the name Ecotopia

There is a British "ethical online supermarket for everyday products" named Ecotopia.co.uk.

In the shared alternate history of Ill Bethisad, "ecotopism" is an important political movement, and a number of nations and subnational entities use the word "ecotopic" in their formal names.

Video game Civilization: Call to Power has Ecotopia as one of the government types. This government type produces the least pollution among all government types.

References

^ • Murray, Heather. "Free for All Lesbians: Lesbian Cultural Production and Consumption in the United States during the 1970s." Journal of the History of Sexuality 16, no. 2 (2007): 251-68.
^ • Callenbach, Ernest. Ecotopia. New York: Bantam Books, 1990
^ ^a ^b • Hilton, Matthew. "Consumers and the State Since the Second World War." The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 611, no. 66 (2007): 66-81.
^ http://www.randomhouse.com/book/23059/ecotopia-by-ernest-callenbach/9780553348477/?view=praise

External links

[1] • Murray, Heather. "Free for All Lesbians: Lesbian Cultural Production and Consumption in the United States during the 1970s." Journal of the History of Sexuality 16, no. 2 (2007): 251-68.

[2] • Callenbach, Ernest. Ecotopia. New York: Bantam Books, 1990

[Hilton,_Matthew_2007-3] • Hilton, Matthew. "Consumers and the State Since the Second World War." The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 611, no. 66 (2007): 66-81.

[4] ttp://www.randomhouse.com/book/23059/ecotopia-by-ernest-callenbach/9780553348477/?view=praise

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