Page 6 RAIN February/March 1982 Ecotopia Emerging, by Ernest Callen- bach, 1981, 326 pp., $7.95, published by Banyan Tree Books, available from: Bookpeople 2940 Seventh St. Berkeley, CA 94710 "Ecotopia is an imaginary place, yet it is all around us, in the process of becoming. Eco- topians enjoy a way of living that respects the natural order instead of seeking ever new ways to exploit it. They care about trees, grasses, solar and geothermal power as replacements for dwindling petrochemical resources. They favor small-scale industry and strong neighborhoods. They preserve wilderness, and they also plant trees in cities, turn parking lots into parks, and prefer walking or bicycling—good for their health, good for the biosphere—to driving. . . . People work only twenty hours per week and accept a lower consumption of material goods in order to free more time for play, creativity, love, friendship. —Ernest Callenbach The novel Ecotopia is the story of the secession of Northern California, Oregon and Washington from the United States to form an ecologically responsible country. Combining appropriate technologies with sane values and good fiction, Callenbach described the adventures in 1999 of William Weston, the first U.S. journalist to visit the new nation since Independence some years earlier. The story was promptly rejected by more than 20 major publishers. With only slightly wavering determination Callenbach organized Banyan Tree Books and, in essence, published the novel himself in 1975. Ecotopia became an underground classic among ecofreaks everywhere, and in the Pacific Northwest it fanned the flames of regional imagination in living rooms, cafes, and meeting places. College teachers used the book for discussion and debate. After its fourth printing Bantam Books purchased mass paperback rights. To date, more than 200,000 copies are in print in Germany, France, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, French Canada and Great Britain. (Bantam is coming out with a cheaper edition of the new book this spring, but if it looks like the last one, you'll be happier spending the extra money for the Banyan Tree edition. Besides, you won't have to wait!) Full of quirky details on Ecotopian lifestyles and relationships, organic agriculture, worker ownership, biodegradable plastics chemistry, ritual (rather than real) war games, and a host of other intricacies, Ecotopia only vaguely alluded to how the Pacific Northwest of today became the Ecotopian nation of the late 1980s. A lot of people were wondering. Hence, this "prequel" to the original novel. Ecotopia Emerging has elements of good strategy. Perfect? Of course not. But fun, readable, and stimulating. Dotted with familiar characters, such as Indian activist Ramona Dukane (any resemblance to RAIN contributor Winona LaDuke is "entirely coincidental"), the story is inspiring and encouraging. Callenbach has a marvelous knack for linking events, trends and phenomena. Looking backward from his crystal ball lends cohesion and credibility to today's chaos and confusion. Ecotopia makes our long-term goals seem possible, our daily struggles worthwhile. Read Ecotopia Emerging, give it to a friend, talk about it, criticize it, debate it, act on it. Ecotopia is becoming real. Let's speed up the process of becoming. —MR ECOTOPIA EMERGING by Ernest Callenbach Ecotopia Emerging is twice as long as the original novel, with four times as many characters, plots, sub-plots, and so on. The following excerpts, reprinted with permission, only give a taste of the book's flavor. The underlying concern of the emerging Ecotopian movement is the biological survival of the region and its inhabitants, "that the species should learn to survive on earth in harmony with the rest of the biosphere." We follow the Survivalist Party from its inception in California state senator Vera Allwen's living room to the Ecotopian "constitutional convention" about 10 years later. Along the way we witness the education of a political process. —MR The organizers of the Survivalist Party knew the dangers of preaching only to the converted. Instead, they concentrated on ways to turn the converted into preachers too. And so Survivalist ideas about education gave a new sense of possibilities to enterprising teachers. Survivalist worker-ownership ideas found a startlingly wide and deep response among people who worked in factories, stores, warehouses, offices. And the Survivalists reached out also to
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