Customer Reviews

Ecotopia

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

 

 

Ernest Callenbach's novel is written in a clever and well thought out manner. The novel tells the story of an American journalist who travels to the independent state of Ecotopia which is a country formed by environmentalists who managed to secede northern California, Oregon and Washington from the American union. The journalist spends time in Ecotopia learning about the young society and how its inhabitants strive to live in a stable state with nature.

It is a well written novel and it is quite clever. The novel clearly serves as a kind of call to arms for environmentalists, not in the military sense but in a "how-to" manner. It describes in fair detail the system of government that has been put in place, how energy, food and consumer goods are produced and how the people live and interact with each other.

The novel reads a lot like a manifesto for a "new" kind of environmental movement and is also full of several contradictions and oddball ideas. One part talks about a secret 3 day war between the USA and Ecotopia shortly after independence and how the Ecotopians shot down about 7000 US combat aircraft. Well, today, the US air force has less than 7000 aircraft and it seems rather absurd that the strongest military on earth would be foolish enough to lose its entire air force in a few days. That being said, the novel is fiction of course.

Callenbach is an entertaining writer, but to really love this book I am fairly certain that you have to be a strong environmentalist. If you're not, you can still enjoy the story and be intrigued by the detail that Callenbach has put into the utopia he created.

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 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.

Sad attempt at scifi -- billing itself as political it fails at that too. Simplistic and underwhelming, it's difficult to persevere [we had it assigned in our book club] -- if you're interested in scifi U- and Dys- topias, check out the realf stuff - Ted Sturgeon, David Brin, the Hyperion novels, etc,etc

This is not a book about plot or characterization; it is a book about an idea. Earlier reviews describe the idea well enough; let my review's contribution be to suggest that if you are looking for gripping plot or deep characters, you should go somewhere else. But if you are interested in an idea that was radical at the time, and still pooh-poohed in our present (2003), then this is a book to read. Indeed, the idea is so important, that this book should be read (... and criticized!...) in any decent educational curriculum. This is a fine book and well worth your time, so long as you don't expect yet-another-normal-novel.

What a pity Frank Herbert or Connie Willis didn't write this book!

I read the prequel (which came out later) to this book, Ecotopia Emerging, first. Ecotopia Emerging was an excellent book, with a pretty gripping plot that did a good job of highlighting Callenbach's call for a more balanced and ecologically sound way of living. I read this book a few weeks later, and I could barely get through it. If you've ever read any science fiction concerning a utopian or alternative society which is visited by an outside scientist/journalist/observer who then ends up becoming a part of the society (think Walden Two), you've already read this book. The book is simply a mouthpiece in which the journalist (with whom you are supposed to identify) wanders around recording his observations in Ecotopia (and sleeping with every woman he meets along the way). There is no real plot or characterization, and it's too predictable to be exciting. If you're looking for a good work of fiction about an ecotopian way of living, do yourself a favor and read Ecotopia Emerging, not this.

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.

"Ecotopia" will be of more interest to students of environmental planning than to sci-fi enthusiasts. It is crammed with sustainable-living ideas presented in a bare-bones, journalistic fashion. e.g. "Ecotopian plastics are entirely derived from living biological sources (plants) rather than from fossilized ones (petroleum and coal) as most of ours are..." The Ecotopians live and work communally in unpainted houses thatched with ivy and wear recyclable shoes.

While it certainly sounds like an ecological utopia, socially it leaves much to be desired, or minimally, much to be seriously questioned. Racial integration has still not been achieved. Everyone practices free, casual sex. Aggression is openly expressed in shouting matches, ritual war games, rough sex, and hostility to performers. There is no concept of high art.

The narrator has traveled from modern, individualistic, earth-raping America to the unknown land of Ecotopia. He grows to appreciate Ecotopia's sense of community and place. It is strange, however, that he never describes any human relationships that he has there, with the exception of his sex kittens. He has sex with every woman he meets. His only thought, upon meeting a woman, is how to get her into the sack. He does not think about the men at all. He falls in love with one woman even though she admits that she is attracted mainly to his exotic, naive, foreign American appeal. And, similarly, he seems to have fallen in love with Ecotopia because of what it represents to him--sustainability, community, honesty--rather than for any tangible reason that would make sense to fiction readers interested in human relations.

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.

The main problem with the idea of an "ecotopia" is that no such state would be able to fend off its neighbors for long. Do you really think a bunch of California hippies could hold off the rest of the United States in a civil war? In the real world, California would be reintegrated with the US by lunch time. A state organized on these principles would simply not be able to exist for long before being swallowed up by its less enlightened but more aggressive neighbors. Sorry. "Those who beat their swords into plows will plow for those who don't."

But as another reviewer wrote, this book is an excellent way to look at the emotional appeal of radical environmentalism, and as such I recommend it.