Customer Reviews

Ecotopia

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This is one of those books that only a mother could love. This is one of my favorite books, but all the critical reviews are correct: the writing style flips back & forth between pretentious & wooden, the characters either shallow or dopey (usually both). This book is no "A Tale of Two Cities." In fact, for this kind of story, Thomas Moore's "Utopia," Bellemy's "Looking Backward"--and probably everything written by Jules Verne are better stories....Way better (especially Moore, the grand-daddy of the genre).

I still love this book, because of all that. When written during the 1970s, it was so "out there" for its time--that reading it now is terribly dated. It's almost like watching 1950s movies about space flight....But this book (in its own weird way) was an important book that helped inspire the environmental movement. No, it's not Rachal Carsons's "Silent Spring," but it reads a heck of a lot better than "Unsafe at any Speed."

If you're in your forties (or older), and want a drift back to the "future" of 1970, or you're younger & want to know why your parents are so weird--Read this book. Or if you are an environmentalist, and want to know where your roots lie--this is a good book to read.

But if you don't have any special interest, and are just looking for a ripping good yarn to pass a rainy saturday afternoon....It's not this book, babe.

I read this book in the early 90's while living in Corvalis, Oregon. At that time you could see and experience bits and peices of "Ecotopia" at Nearly Normal's restaurant, The Beanery, and New Morning Bakery. Callenbach takes communal eco-feminist ideas and extends them to imagine a new society based on them. I do not think I would like to live in Ecotopia. Parts of it appeal to me, parts of it don't. But it was well worth the visit. Ten years later I still think about this book, and recommend it. If you are an ideological literalist, don't go there. You won't like it. If you want to explore the consequences of ideas and values, you will find Ecotopia a useful place to think about the world as it is and the world as it could be.

This book has a fascinating history. Originally written as a news essay about the places to dispose sewage, it became one of the few viable utopian novels written since 1984 and Brave New World -- genuinely utopian, rather than anti-utopian. Of course, it's really about moving to Northern California in the 1970s, or Northern California as the Northern Californians hoped it would become. The internal combustion engine is outlawed, and babbling brooks flow down San Francisco's Market Street. Ecotopia's most engaging quality is the portrait that Callenbach provides of the golden young people of the counterculture, living the informal, thumb-your-nose- at-authority-but- build-a-world-together spirit that American culture had beaten down. (The spirit is mostly gone, but the novel remains.) Interestingly, Callenbach was a former Organizational Development consultant, and the corporations described in Ecotopia -- collaborative enterprises owned by the participants -- are not that different from the dot-coms of today.

This novel is a mixed bag, and it's stayed with me for some time since I first read it. On the plus side, I found the book an easy, wonderfully quick read, and a pretty good exercise of world-building. I also found much to like in Ecotopia's vision, such as its environmental policies and progressive educational system, etc.

BUT...there is something decidedly specious about the ideals represented in the book, and in truth it was sometimes hard to tell if Callenbach was being sincere or satirical. Valid objections about the Ecotopian timeline aside, as well as its obvious hippy vintage, Ecotopia's almost enforced diversity--albeit in a non-bourgeois lifestyle--passive-aggression, and occasional totalitarian structure make even a tree-hugging, bleeding-heart liberal like me raise an eyebrow. Ecotopia sounds like a place that's better than Hell, but still ten floors below Heaven.

Recommended, but with a grain of salt; definitely not a play-book for the perfect society.

Ecotopia is a book that is definitely worth reading, in that it describes a nation that is desperately striving to save its own environment and the health of the Earth as a whole. As an environmental novel this is undoubtedly a ground-breaking work. However, there were several areas where I thought that it could use considerable improvement. Firstly, the nation of Ecotopia is ridiculously fertile and well-off - many of the problems that would occur in any real implementation of an environmental state are simply brushed off. Population control is easy because these states are already close to zero-growth; finding money for maglev trains is even easier because Boeing just happens to be in the country; workers' control of factories and land reform is easy because people are all nice; there is no large-scale opposition; and so on. When considering past revolutions which also attempted to create Utopian states, this sort of doo dee doo optimism is somewhat disconcerting. Here, it seems that the book comes dangerously close to the line between vision and fantasy. Secondly, the book's storyline is somewhat trite, and character development is not really present. Thus, it would be stretching it a bit to call Ecotopia a work of literature. Nevertheless, though, Ecotopia is an imaginative work, and should be read if only for the sake of seeing what one possible environmental state might be like.

Ecotopia, by Ernest Callenbach, is not what one might call a novel. It's written from the point of view of a New York journalist exploring the world of the Northwest after an environmental secession. Others have mentioned the lack of character depth, but the point of the book is not to interest you in the characters; it is to interest you in the world.

In Ecotopia, people are very free, relaxed. In San Francisco, rather than the endless cars and streets and smog, there are parks and newly ubiquitous bikes. The idea behind the bikes is that you can go outside and find them, ride them where you're going, then leave them there for the next person to use. Interesting?

The culture and society of Ecotopia are thought-provoking, at least for a teenager. When I read this book it was the first time I really thought about what things could be done as alternatives to the current way of life. After reading Ecotopia, I am more environmentally conscious. I enjoyed the concept behind this book very much. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the future if the Green party takes over, or something along those lines.

While there's nothing that I can really discuss content-wise that already hasn't been mentioned in other reviews, I just want to express my own enjoyment of this truly unique work. Granted, it is not the most well-written novel that I've read, but it has moved me as few have. Callenbach's vision of a society governed by a respect for the environment is one that I yearn to see become a reality. Ecotopia is a truly inspirational work, one which I highly recommend that everyone should read.

Utopia novels are always a real hoot to read. Every fringe group with an axe to grind eventually churns out some idealistic novel about the way things ought to be. We have socialism represented in Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward." The racists weigh in with William Peirce's fascistic "The Turner Diaries." Even feminists have a novel, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "Herland." Perhaps it was inevitable the environmentalists would put forth their own work, Ernest Callenbach's "Ecotopia."

Ecotopia is a country made up of the states of Washington, Oregon, and a big chunk of California. After a period of political and economic turmoil, these states seceded from the United States circa 1980. They were able to do this because economic conditions in the United States were so bad (apparently Callenbach assumed the problems of the 1970's would continue to spiral us downwards) that the government could not mount an effective civil war to bring the states back into the fold. Further complicating the issue was the nuclear mines Ecotopian guerillas planted in Washington D.C. and other American cities. By the time "Ecotopia" starts, twenty years have passed since Ecotopia gained its independence.

"Ecotopia" tells the story of William Weston, a crack journalist for a big New York newspaper. Weston's mission, if he chooses to accept it, is to take a journey into the country of Ecotopia and report on what he finds there. Weston is your typical big city boy--arrogant, flighty, divorced, and always looking for a new bimbo to drape over his arm. The insights into Weston's character come from italicized "journal" entries placed directly before his official newspaper articles. Needless to say, Weston undergoes a sea change in attitude as he uncovers every aspect of Ecotopian life. He even hooks up with a tree-worshipping chickadee named Marissa, which allows Callenbach to throw in plenty of gratuitous sex scenes. Callenbach proves to us that a return to nature produces an oversexed population, a behavior Weston is more than willing to take part in.

Callenbach uses Weston's articles to reveal a wide array of Ecotopian modes of thought, creativity, and lifestyles. The most important of these aspects is the "stable-state" system, where Ecotopians direct all aspects of government, production, and lifestyle towards the idea of reusable commodities. Ecotopia avoids the use of heavy metals, unbiodegradable plastics, and internal combustion engines. They don't want to use anything that cannot be reused at some point, or anything that may put stress on the environment. Predictably, bicycles are widely used, population growth is discouraged, biodegradable materials are heavily used, and big cities are slowly giving way to smaller, tight knit communities. Pollution is a grave crime in Ecotopia, and many citizens agitate for military action against nations involved in reckless destruction of the environment.

Military action? From a peaceful, green state? Oh yes, Ecotopia does have a military branch, an intelligence apparatus, and a political structure that, at times, wields a heavy hand. Behind the all the hand holding and smiles lurk ominous communistic overtones that threaten to overthrow the world Callenbach attempts to create. At one point, secret police officers approach Weston after he meets with a group of disaffected Ecotopians who want to restore relations with the United States and ease the march towards a greener society. Ecotopians do not believe in being alone, either, as Weston discovers when told, "Here we try to arrange it so we are not lonely very often. That keeps us from making a lot of emotional mistakes." It also prevents people from thinking dangerous thoughts about society and their position within that society, does it not?

It is society over the individual that concerns Callenbach's Ecotopians. Weston learns "We don't think in terms of things, there are no such things as a thing-there are only systems." Weston realizes, at this point, that he is part of a system, that he is not a separate individual thing. Tell that to the individual who questions Ecotopia's emphasis on nature over humans. Of course, in Callenbach's utopia, no one seriously questions the underlying principle of environmental based political structures, but in the real world this would never happen. I shudder to think about what would happen to those who questioned this system too deeply. Perhaps a gulag system near Spokane or execution without trial might clear up these pesky problems.

"Ecotopia" isn't a lost cause. There are a few things within these pages that are agreeable and pleasing. The breakup of mass media systems within Ecotopia in favor of small, multiple outlets is a splendid idea. But overall, worrying darkness looms behind the smiling faces in Callenbach's utopian vision. "Ecotopia" proves that going too far to one extreme in a quest for ultimate happiness is never a good thing.

"Ecotopia" comprises the futuristic musings of Mr. Callenbach, who has compiled a "1984" for the late 20th century through visions of a positive utopia, albeit one that could only exist outside the borders of the United States. Unlike Orwell or Huxley, however, Callenbach prsents the fictitious nation of "Ecotopia" outside the political and technoloical sphere of the rest of the world- as an isolated geopolitical entity. This is interesting considering the book's emergance 20 years prior to the current "globalisation" conflict gripping the world that pits the global conformity thought to be a future theme by Orwell and Huxley aainst the virtues of th small nation-state. Callenbach presents Ecotopia as a model of small-nation efficiency and cohesiveness. Although the premises of Ecotopia's emergence as an independent state are somewhat suspicious, they are irrelevant to the overall message of the book.

That said, the book is throughlly well-executed, presenting the new nation as seen through the eys of an American reporter, significant due to the belligerant status employed between the two nations at the current period. Will Weston, the novel's "hero", not only studies Ecotopian culture but becomes overtaken and intertwined in its decadence. The interspertion of Weston's personal thoughts and his articles sent back to New York are interesting and present the contrastin views of Weston the "journalist" versus Weston the "man".

Ecotopia itself is the realisation of an almost utopic society for many environmentalists, urbanists, and socialists. One will have to dive into the actual work to discover its intricacies, but I will divulge that Callenbach does not present the nation as a complete paradise and carefully balances the American perspective with Ecotopian attitudes. I thoroughlly recommend this not only beautiful work of fiction, but excellent commentary on our social and environmental future.

I loved reading Ecotopia for my Government class. This book is really easy to understand. The author goes into great detail. For those of you who do like exploring new things this book is for you. It is possible to have a world like Ecotopia, that's whats so appealing. I recomend this to everyone. Open your mind explore something new and don't be afraid.