Ernest Callenbach

Investigative reporter William Weston crosses the Sierra Nevada mountains and enters Ecotopia, the first American to do so since the Ecotopian secession from the U.S. in 1980

The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston

Ecotopia

Edward Steel

Namera Nous

Science fiction-roman. I 1999 besøger en amerikansk journalist det ukendte samfund Ecotopia, som består af tre løsrevne amerikanske stater, og sender øjenvidnerapporter hjem til sin avis

John Balek

This is the future liberals want. Actually this future is too extreme for most liberals. This is actually the future 70's leftists aspired to. Ecotopia is the story of the pacific northwest succeeding from the United States and starting a society based on renewable energy, recycling, and dedicated public transit. Imagine the Green New Deal turned up to 11 and allowed to flourish over 25 years.

The narrative of Ecotopia is the story of William Weston, an American journalist, in the far off year of 1999 being one of the first Americans to visit this new society. Over time William goes from skeptic to fully indoctrinated in the world of Ecotopia. While there are a lot of really great ideas that are highly influencial on evironmental thinking portrayed in this book, that are still cutting edge today, there is plenty that hasn't aged well or falls flat and kind of ruins the enjoyement of this book in the modern day.

Being written in 1975, Ecotopia takes a lot of influence from the cold war environment of the day. Each chapter starts with a journalistic approach to exploring the world of Ecotopia and finishes with a second half of William Weston's personal account of his experiences in this exotic world. Reading this feels a lot like a westerner visiting an Iron Curtain country during the 1970's and a lot of the Sci Fi elements are parallel to this experience.

Each chapter offers a new insight into this society that draws a lot more on the aspirational goals of the left in 2020's America than you might expect. These are the highlights of the book. Where Ecotopia falls flat is when the personal accounts come in. At first I really enjoyed these sections, as they fleshed out the story but after the first 100 pages they start to focus on a love story that is terribly bland and run of the mill for 70's Sci Fi.

This is where Ecotopia started to lose me. I love the exploration of this world and alot of these ideas but the dated views and limited story really weaken the book; as a whole. Callenbach likes to claim that this world is equal where women and men work as one but he cannot imagine a world beyond his in the 70s that actually achieves this. For as much as Ecotopia is claimed to be a world where women are equal to men, there is very little evidence of this. Every female character given any sort of depth in this book exists soley to offer William Weston affection. The only exception to this might be the President who is the only woman to be put in a nontraditional role; and even still she isn't really given much focus aside from standing as a "progressive" element to enhance the world of Ecotopia. I don't usually get caught up on gender politics like this but this oversight was too much; even for me.

Callenbach offers a lot of great progressive ideas about how a society should be run, many I agree with but he really falls short with a lot of concepts. I try to take a lot of these 70s stories with a grain of salt but the fact that this is the second Sci Fi book I read this summer where a group of Black American's breaks away to start their own society called "Soul City" really shows that white guys, especially white guys in the 70s, are probably best not giving their opinions on race. 

The prose of Callenbach can be pretty run on the mill. I wouldn't say any of the writing here is very spectacular. Most of the book's enjoyment rides on its ideas. Some of these sections are great. They really offer a lot of ideas that are still idealistic to our modern world but plenty of them are subpar, if they aren't terrible. With how short this book is there isn't much room for error or malaise. While I have my issues with this book I would say it is still a great portrayal of environmenal ideas that anyone interested in that type of society could enjoy. Overall I'd rather read a mixed bag of a utopia story than a harsh, dismal dystopian.

Ecotopia The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston

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