Yet the exhaustive listing of eco-techno life-style fixes comes across a bit like a Whole Earth Catalog more than a novel. As the querulous everyman Weston articulates the scepticism of the average reader, circumventing any criticism. There is a character arc, though, and even a ‘shift’ – a moment of gnosis – when the professional cynical, ‘hard-nosed’ Weston finally sees the light. Although serious thought and research has clearly gone into the wide-ranging solutions, the ficto-critical framing device feels a bit thinly veiled and unconvincing at times – a creaky means for stringing together a series of essays. Chapter by chapter, Weston’s despatches methodically chart Ecotopian society, technology, culture and morality – Callenbach’s expositional device for working through virtually aspect of modern life and reimagining it in an environmental, sustainable way. Using an epistolary form the novel purports to be the ‘notebooks and reports of William Weston’, an American journalist who undertakes a long assignment in the country of Ecotopia – formerly the western states of the USA, which have broken off from the union to follow a Green agenda and achieve an aspirational ‘stable state’ eco-economy.

Ecotopia (the book) is a series of his diary entries and news reports.First published in 1975, but more relevant now than ever, this is a flawed but important book. So much so that Americans have only received scattered, selective, and dodgy information about what Ecotopia is truly like.Īnd that is where our protagonist steps in – a reporter from America has been allowed access to Ecotopia to write about what life is really like, perhaps in a step to foster better relations between the two countries or at least greater understanding. But in Ecotopia (the book), the war is 20 years or so behind us, and Ecotopia (the Pacific Northwest nation-state) has been effectively cloistered from the rest of America. This time the war wasn’t over slavery, but rather ecological principles and the divide wasn’t North-South but pitted the Pacific Northwest versus the rest.

In Ernest Callenbach’s novel, we are transported to a contemporary America, albeit an America that has been torn in two through civil war. Introduction: Since 1972, Ecotopia has inspired many to envision, and perhaps even foster, a more ecological society. Comment from Niklas Lollo on the novel 'Ecotopia' by Ernest Callenbach.

Book ecotopia