Debbie - reviewed on 9/29/2005 + 136 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 2

Fascinating look at a country that's goals include reaching "steady-state" through environmentally friendly means. Printed 30 years ago, this story revolves around the secession of Washington, Oregon, and northern California from the United States and what the resulting Ecotopia is like after twenty years of existence. In this country, automobiles, busses, air travel, and polluting trains are banned - people walk or ride free bikes and live in "families" made up of like-minded others who are not necessarily blood relations. Sexual liasons are casual and frequent changes of partners accepted. (No discussion of sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS are mentioned). Anything that cannot decompose, like synthetic clothing materials and house paints, are banned. The work week is only twenty hours. Trees are revered and planted everywhere, even in what used to be downtown parking lots. Balanced against that is exciting new developments, like picture phones, natural fiber clothing that repels water or warms the body in winter, and plastics that are surdy but degrade within weeks. All is not wonderful though, there is a dark side to extreme environmentalism in the form of declining birth rates and ritual war games. Some things seem archaic for a book supposedly set in the future, like the assumption that its the rare American woman who works outside the home compared to Ecotopian females who factor largely in positions of authority. Computers and televisions figure prominently in this land, but apparently the author did not realize then, like we do now, that they too are a troubling source of pollution. This book is in the same vein as Aldus Huxley's "Brave New World and George Orwell's "1984."

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