Ecotopia
Subtitle: the notebooks and reports of William Weston
By: Ernest Callenbach
Publisher: Banyan Tree Books : distributed by Bookpeople
Published: 1975
Place of publication: Berkeley, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 167
Subjects: Human ecology -- Fiction.; Environmentalism -- Fiction.; Environmentalists -- Fiction.; Nature conservation -- Fiction.; Conservation of natural resources -- Fiction.
Genres: Fiction.
Description: Ecotopia was founded when northern California, Oregon, and Washington seceded from the Union to create a "stable-state" ecosystem: the perfect balance between human beings and the environment. Now, twenty years later, the isolated, mysterious Ecotopia welcomes its first officially sanctioned American visitor: New York Times-Post reporter Will Weston. Like a modern Gulliver, the skeptical Weston is by turns impressed, horrified, and overwhelmed by Ecotopia's strange practices: employee ownership of farms and businesses, the twenty-hour work week, the fanatical elimination of pollution, mini-cities that defeat overcrowding, devotion to trees bordering on worship, a woman-dominated government, and bloody, ritual war games. Bombarded by innovative, unsettling ideas, set afire by a relationship with a sexually forthright Ecotopian woman, Weston's conflict of values intensifies-and leads to a startling climax.
Notes: Novel.