Ecotopia
Cover of the first edition
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| Author | Ernest Callenbach |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Utopian novel |
| Publisher | Ernest Callenbach (first self-published as Banyan Tree Books); later Bantam Books (1977); 30th-Anniversary edition, Heyday Books (2005) |
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Publication date
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1975 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 181 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 20169799 |
| 813.54 20 | |
| LC Class | PS3553.A424 E35 1990 |
| Followed by | Ecotopia Emerging |
Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston is a 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 author himself claimed that the society he depicted in the book is not a true utopia (in the sense of a perfect society), but, while guided by societal intentions and values, was imperfect and in-process.
Callenbach said of the story, in relation to Americans: “It is so hard to imagine anything fundamentally different from what we have now. But without these alternate visions, we get stuck on dead center. And we’d better get ready. We need to know where we’d like to go.”
Callenbach wove his story using the fiber of technologies, lifestyles, folkways, and attitudes that were common in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. The "leading edges" (his main ideas for Ecotopian values and practices) were patterns in actual social 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.
Besides the important social dimensions of the story, Callenbach talked publicly about being influenced, during work on the novel, by numerous streams of thought: The scientific discoveries in the fields of ecology and conservation biology. The urban-ecology movement, concerned with a new approach to urban planning. The soft-energy movement, championed by Amory Lovins and others. Much of the environmentally benign energy, homebuilding, and transportation technology described by the author was based on his reading of research findings published in such journals as Scientific American and Science.
Callenbach’s concept does not reject high technology (or any technology) as long as it does not interfere with the Ecotopian social order and serves the overall objectives. Members of his fictional society prefer to demonstrate a conscious selectivity toward technology, so that not only human health and sanity might be preserved, but also social and ecological wellbeing. Hence, as an example, Callenbach’s story anticipated the development and liberal usage of videoconferencing.
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