Ecotopia
Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston is a utopian novel by Ernest Callenbach, published in 1975. The society described in the book is one of the first ecological utopias and was influential on the counterculture and the green movement in the 1970s and thereafter. The author himself claimed that the society he depicted in the book is not a true utopia (in the sense of a perfect society), but, while guided by societal intentions and values, was imperfect and in-process. Callenbach said of the story, in relation to Americans: "It is so hard to imagine anything fundamentally different from what we have now. But without these alternate visions, we get stuck on dead center. And we’d better get ready. We need to know where we’d like to go." )
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- the "project hieroglyph" anthology is great. it's "techno-optimistic science fiction" which isn't 100% identical to solarpunk but does have considerable overlap.
among older SF, "ecotopia" would definitely be called solarpunk if it were published today. it's a little preachy but I enjoyed it. becky chambers's "monk and robot" books are great modern examples, I can definitely recommend those if you like quietly philosophical science fiction.
- I've been recommending Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach. Very few under 30s have heard of it. A classic of the 1970s New Left. Yet stunningly predicts the current secessionist mindset of the Alt Right. Plus ca change ;)
- Some of us were paying attention.
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My 4th grade teacher (1978) was brain washing us into being tree huggers. Conserve water while brushing our teeth was "magic". Turn down the heat. Recycle. Etc.
I recall hippie flavored propaganda in the school library asking if we wanted Earth to become a Red Planet (industrial) a Green Planet (farming) or Blue Planet (natural ecosystems), or some combination.
My (much older) cousin was a physicist studying submarine acoustics. He's always known, patiently explained the whatnots to us younger skeptics.
I worked at a civil engineering firm while still in high school (1980s). All the adults seemed to know what was happening, even if we didn't yet know all the causes. I vividly remember my boss (from Canada) telling me his childhood neighborhood lake was no longer safe to play hockey on.
I volunteered thru the 1990s at an org trying to save the PNW salmon. The staff scientists knew our local snow packs were shrinking. (Need the melt for salmon runs.) Now our mountains are bare most of the year, of course. Terrifying.
Maybe because I read a lot of sci-fi, I've always "known". Most memorable to me have been John Brunner's Shockwave Rider, The Sheep Look Up, and Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia. But of course, post-apocalyptic is a popular storyline, so there have been zillions others.
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PS, for the down voter(s), one of the minor plot lines from the TV show Dallas was Bobby Ewing's renewable energy efforts, in opposition to older brother JR Ewing's doubling down on carbon. In debating with Bobby in front of Daddy Ewing, JR's money quote was "We've been running out of oil since the first oil well." So, ya, climate change was part of the (most) popular culture too.
- Not saying these are the best, but they probably should be in consideration:
1948, Walden Two, B.F. Skinner
1975, Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston, Ernest Callenbach
- one of the most influential books on this topic for me was : Ecotopia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotopia
it attempts to solve all of man's biological, emotional, and spiritual needs via a techno-eco master plan.
top 10 book on my list. enjoy
- I've been raving about two books this year:
1) The Swerve (won the Pulitzer Prize)
A few years old but newly relevant - it made me think, are we at the dawn of a new renaissance or the breakdown of society? Both have happened before... we lost much of the classical era's accumulated human knowledge when papyrus scrolls were burned/destroyed in the Middle Ages. Is computer storage much more resilient than papyrus in the face of social upheaval?
2) Ecotopia
What if Northern California seceded and let its crazy out in a super-green, post-technological, self-sufficient independent state? This book, written in the 1970s, has ridiculous foresight and anyone familiar with the Bay Area will deeply appreciate this thought experiment.
