Ecological and Social Utopias

Ecological and Social Utopias and Dystopias

Oscar Wilde had it right: “A map of the world that does not include utopia is not even worth consulting.”

See also Book Recommendations and Writing (for literature). Also Eco-Feminism, See also dynamic graphical map

Utopia (literally no place) is a way of imagining how to make a better world. Often these represent a road not taken, a warning unheeded. A fine survey of them was done by Lewis Mumford,The Story of Utopias (New York: The Viking Press, 1962). He has influenced, among others, Amory Lovin, E.F. Schumacher, Murray Bookchin, and Marshall McLuhan.

Utopianists.net overview site.

Core Text:

Callenbach, Ernest. Ecotopia (1975). McH Stacks PS3553.A424E25 1990.

This classic work gave a name to an entire science fiction subgenre. Ecotopia presents a first-person account of a U.S. American journalist visiting a break-away ecological utopia situated in Northern California. video interview. alt link. another talk. His farewell: Epistle to the Ecotopians, a remembrance. a list of his books. A sketchbook to help you use your visual imagination to envision Ecotopia (main page). William McDonough is building cities in China based on Ecotopian principles (TEDtalk video). Dynamic graphical map

Newer

How sci-fi could help solve climate change 2/19

Better Worlds: "a science fiction project about hope" 12/18.

This Visionary Sci-Fi Author Sees the Destruction of Human Civilization: Predatory Capitalism; Ted Chiang examines how Silicon Valley has become its own worst nightmare. 12/17.

The McCall Initiative is a story told in serial form. If you’re a fan of edge-of-your-seat dystopian thrillers with a twist of romance, you’ll love Lisa Nowak’s glimpse at a future that’s all too plausible. Great for fans of The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Legend. see Ecotopia.

Cli-Fi

In TIME magazine, journalist-turned-climate-activist Bill McKibben describes how the world could look by mid-century if the collective we confront climate change head-on in the next few years. While we’re not “getting out of this unscathed,” McKibben describes paths forward after 2020 that are just as potentially politically achievable as doing nothing or not doing enough.

McKibben’s vision of the positive and possible is a welcome change from recent, despairing climate forecasts by public intellectuals — from David Wallace-Wells’ book “The Uninhabitable Earth” to Jonathan Franzen’s “What If We Stopped Pretending” (that “the climate apocalypse is coming”) in The New Yorker. see Cl-Fi U/dystopias. 9/19

Rule of Capture: Inside the martial law tribunals that will come when climate deniers become climate looters and start rendering environmentalists for offshore torture. new science fiction graphic novel series “High Level” from DC Comics by Rob Sheridan. He is a futurist and former graphic designer for the band Nine Inch Nails. 9/19.

More on Cli-Fi,

How sci-fi could help solve climate change 2/19.

American War, (amazon) audio interview, (2nd 1/2) the first novel by Canadian-Egyptian journalist Omar El Akkad set in a near-future United States of America ravaged by climate change in which a second Civil War has broken out over the use of fossil fuels. The story is told by Benjamin Chestnut about his aunt Sarat, and is told through narrative chapters interspersed with fictional primary documents collected by the narrator. NYT review 8/16.

Splinterlands (2016) by John Feffer. Part Field Notes from a Catastrophe, part 1984, part World War Z, John Feffer's striking new dystopian novel, takes us deep into the battered, shattered world of 2050. As he navigates the world of 2050, Julian West offers a roadmap for the path we're already on, a chronicle of impending disaster, and a faint light of hope. He may be humanity's last best chance to explain how the world unraveled—if he can survive the savage beauty of the Splinterlands

Climate: The Water Knife: In The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi's best-selling, Hugo- and Nebula-winning debut, the author imagines a 23rd century in which the forces of commerce have run amok over the basic, biological building blocks of life. In his equally powerful sophomore novel, The Water Knife, he takes a similar approach to an inorganic substance without which human life wouldn't exist: H2O.

Along with over two dozen other writers, Robinson and Bacigalupi feature in Loosed Upon the World, the mammoth new reprint anthology of cli-fi from master editor John Joseph Adams.

T.C. Boyle's A Friend of the Earth about a possible near future of global warming, includes a character presumably based on Julia Butterfly Hill, but also makes reference to other eco-folk we should all know about. Recommended.

The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future. In this haunting, provocative work of science-based fiction, Naomi Oreskes and Eric M. Conway imagine a world devastated by climate change 2014

The Big Thaw: Travels in the Melting North (eBook)

Practical Utopia: Strategies for a Desirable Society by Michael Albert PM Press, 2017. (audio interview).

Climate: The Water Knife: In The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi's best-selling, Hugo- and Nebula-winning debut, the author imagines a 23rd century in which the forces of commerce have run amok over the basic, biological building blocks of life. In his equally powerful sophomore novel, The Water Knife, he takes a similar approach to an inorganic substance without which human life wouldn't exist: H2O.

UC Santa Cruz held a conference in honor of "Ecotopia." (video). It's a 40-year-old book by Ernest Callenbach that's helped shape modern ideas about sustainability. Cy Musiker explores the long tail of this utopian classic. Reporter: Cy Musiker - See more (audio). 10/15. alt link. Keynote by Kim Stanley Robinson. Virtually all of Robinson's novels have an ecological component; sustainability is one of his primary themes. (A strong contender for the primary theme would be the nature of a plausible utopia.) The Orange County trilogy is about the way in which the technological intersects with the natural, highlighting the importance of keeping the two in balance. In the Mars trilogy, one of the principal divisions among the population of Mars is based on dissenting views on terraforming; it is heavily debated whether or not the seemingly barren Martian landscape has a similar ecological or spiritual value to a living ecosphere like Earth's. Forty Signs of Rain has an entirely ecological thrust, taking global warming for its principal subject. His recent climate novel, New York 2140.

Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction 2014 by Gerry Canavan (Editor), Kim Stanley Robinson (Editor) see also Otto, Green Speculations.

Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction from Social Movements. An anthology of visionary science fiction and speculative fiction written by organizers and activists. 4/15.

A new film, The OceanMaker, 3D animated short film which highlights how precious our water resources are. The film, which has appeared in many film festivals including SXSW, is set in a dystopian future where the seas have vanished and a young female pilot has to battle sky pirates for the last of the remaining water residing in the clouds. see Water.

The Burning World:The Aviator is a satiric dystopian graphic novel. Flying his hi-tech airship around a world devastated by climate change and economic collapse, the hero of The Aviator encounters the scattered and often weird remnants of our civilization.

Adam Rex's young adult novel, The True Meaning of Smekda 2007, a weird, brilliant vision of an Earth invaded — and later abandoned — by a hostile alien race called the Boov.

Santa Cruz Island Fox recovery inspired novelist TC Boyle to write about it, When The Killing's Done.T.C. Boyle's A Friend of the Earth about a possible near future of global warming, includes a character presumably based on Julia Butterfly Hill, but also makes reference to other eco-folk we should all know about. Recommended.

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, who "won the Turner Tomorrow Award's half-million-dollar first prize for this fascinating and odd book--not a novel by any conventional definition--which was written 13 years ago but could not find a publisher. The unnamed narrator is a disillusioned modern writer who answers a personal ad ("Teacher seeks pupil. . . . Apply in person.") and thereby meets a wise, learned gorilla named Ishmael that can communicate telepathically. The bulk of the book consists entirely of philosophical dialogues between gorilla and man, on the model of Plato's Republic." McH Stacks PS3567.U338 I8 1992

After the Deluge Many tackle the apocalypse, but not since Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia has a writer envisioned its Left Coast utopian aftermath. In Carlsson's highly imaginative sci-fi thriller, an alienated teen and an arson investigator reveal the fissures in San Francisco's revolutionary new society. After The Deluge deserves a wide readership for its vivid blueprint of a sustainable direct democracy set among the still-familiar human cultures and neighborhoods—-enhanced by greenways and canals—-of the City by the Bay. (Laura Lent, librarian, San Francisco Public Library)

Cormac McCarthy The Road a very dark post-apocalyptic novel, winner of Pulitzer Prize by the author of No Country for Old Men review McH Stacks PS3563.A261 R63 2006.

Classics

News from Nowhere by William Morris "is a utopian socialist novel often ignored by Marxists and others who denounce it as backward-looking. It is true that Morris's vision of a society which has reverted to a more anti-technology agricultural base seems almost gentle by contemporary standards, but careful readers will gain insights into Morris's personal philosophy through this unique work." Morris was the founder of the Arts and Crafts Movement in UK, which spread to US, and inspired a DIY with natural materials mentality that still resonates. The book is recommended by Rebecca Solnit.

Another way of imaging a better world, more in harmony with nature, is to use Science Fiction: (20 said to change your life also NPR top 100)

Fun map: Shelley, Ward. 2011. History of Science Fiction. Courtesy of Ward Shelley Studio. In “7th Iteration (2011): Science Maps as Visual Interfaces to Digital Libraries,” Places & Spaces: Mapping Science, edited by Katy Börner and Michael J. Stamper. http://scimaps.org.

1973 Film Soylent Green and the Environmental Movement: Professor Emilie Raymond talked about the 1973 film Soylent Green and how it reflected the contemporary environmental movement and fears about overpopulation. BookTV video 7/19.

Issac Asimov on global warming in 1989 (video).

Ray Bradbury homage. a very short 1951 story that prefigures America’s codependent love affair with cars. “The Pedestrian” isn’t Bradbury’s best work, but if you’ve ever been horrified by the degree to which affluent humans have holed up in their climate-controlled homes and SUVs, it just might send a shiver down your spine.

Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, a guilty pleasure that has the power to transcend the terrestrial mediocrity of everyday life. (not necessarily environmental)

Callenbach, Ernest. Ecotopia (1975). McH Stacks PS3553.A424E25 1990 This classic work gave a name to an entire science fiction subgenre. Ecotopia presents a first-person account of a U.S. American journalist visiting a break-away ecological utopia situated in Northern California. video interview. alt link. another talk. His farewell: Epistle to the Ecotopians.

LeGuin, Ursula K. Always Coming Home (1985). PS3562.E42A79 1987 This masterwork by LeGuin is not so much a novel as a collection of ethnographic material on a future Californian people called the Kesh. The Kesh illustrate what LeGuin calls “yin utopia” – as opposed, of course, to the “yang” version – and their society features many common ecotopian and ecofeminist themes, including anarchist and matriarchal politics, small-is-beautiful economics, and appropriate technology. See also 1974's The Dispossessed.1/18 obit.

Piercy, Marge. Woman on the Edge of Time (1976). In this excellent novel, a woman diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia shuttles back and forth between our U.S. American present and two possible futures, one ecotopian and ecofeminist in bent, the other technocratic.

Robinson, Kim Stanley: Mars Trilogy : Red Mars (1993) , Green Mars (1994) , Blue Mars (1996).

Three Californias Trilogy : The Wild Shore (1984), The Gold Coast (1988), Pacific Edge (1990).

ed. Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias

Kim Stanley Robinson has devoted his prolific sf career to proving that so-called “hard science fiction” need not be politically conservative; much of his fiction features ecotopian themes. His Mars Trilogy , winner of multiple sf awards, thematizes the terraforming of Mars, featuring multiple utopian societies and political debates between Greens and “Reds” – as the Mars Firsters are appropriately called. His Three Californias Trilogy takes place in three alternate versions of Orange County ; The Gold Coast PS3568.O2893 G65 1995 the last, Pacific Edge , PS3568.O2893 P3 1995 is the only properly ecotopian version. Future Primitive , as the subtitle indicates, is a collection of ecotopian stories, featuring fiction by LeGuin, Terry Bisson, and Rachel Pollack, among many others.

Starhawk. The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993): Written by a popular proponent of ecofeminist spirituality, this novel contrasts a beautiful vision of ecotopian San Francisco with a horrifying fundamentalist theocratic Southern California .

Sterling, Bruce. Schismatrix Plus (1985+) This post-novel by cyberpunk polemicist and founder of the Viridian eco-design movement details the ongoing war between “Shapers” and “Mechanists”, featuring in the process a variety of ecologically-oriented space societies.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller, Jr., first published in 1960. Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the story spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the fictional Albertian Order of Leibowitz take up the mission of preserving the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the day the outside world is again ready for it.audio). See also Anathem, a speculative fiction novel by Neal Stephenson, published in 2008. Major themes include the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and the philosophical debate between Platonic realism and formalism. Neal Stephenson's nearly thousand page tome Anathem was inspired in part by Long Now's 10,000 Year Clock project, and so a collaboration on the launch event (audio) was a natural fit and began with a performance of the elaborate math based chanting created for the book by composer David Stutz. Neal Stephenson then took the stage to read the first few pages of Anathem, and afterward he was joined on stage by Stewart Brand and Danny Hillis for a discussion about the book and Long Now.

Historical and Current Real Utopian Communes

America and the utopian dream yale.

William McDonough is building cities in China based on Ecotopian principles (TEDtalk video).

Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House Ken Goffman a.k.a. R.U. Sirius, Dan Joy

West of Eden: Communes and Utopia in Northern California

Paolo Soleri designed Arcosanti.

Occupied Cascadia is a new documentary film both journalistic and expressionistic. Exploring the emerging understanding of bioregionalism within the lands and waters of the Northeast Pacific Rim, the filmmakers interweave intimate landscape portraits with human voices both ideological and indigenous.

Occupied Cascadia (full version) is people taking Ecotopia seriously, building local community on bio-regional principles.