Via GristMill and Planetizen, a thirtieth anniversary review of Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia. Wikipedia also has a short and useful summary of the book. How popular was this book? Seattle Weekly, in a lengthy interview with the author, states that it sold over a million copies in nine languages. The same page also shows the same cover as my battered old copy, with the monorail crossing the rainbow. (Ecotopia is an urban planner's paradise!)
I remember when I first picked up a copy at a used book store in high school. As a description of an alternative future, it fit in well with the other science fiction books on my shelf. However, nothing in the book required any extraordinary leap of scientific imagination, either in the workings of the universe or of humanity. Though the book does imagine social structures designed to curb the innately greedy or destructive tendencies of humanity, it doesn't require (or supply) any fundamental insights into human behavior, or why humans exploit the environment.
Kim Stanley Robinson is another writer of alternative future novels. A good summary of his work is here. His alternative futures range through history and space, from his most recent novel, The Years of Rice and Salt, which imagines Europe (even more) thoroughly decimated by the Black Death in the 14th century, and the flowering of medieval Islam and Buddhism; to the Mars trilogy, which imagines the terraforming and colonization of Mars; to his first novels, which envision three alternative visions for the development of Orange County, ranging from post-nuclear apocalypse survival, to a city shaped by greed and exploitation (the "O.C." comes to mind), to another vision of Californian ecotopia (the one I've read).
All of these books, like the original Utopia by Sir Thomas More, are all equally alluring, powerful, and flat, because they sketch the workings of alternative worlds, rather than the inhabitants within. Maybe creating an alternative world is already hard enough, without giving the characters any additional emotions. Another possibility is that the people we know, and care about, are the people who are faced with the same challenges that we face everyday -- and once we remove these challenges by describing an alternative history, we remove their connection to our emotional reality. Or perhaps we're still waiting for the writer who is skillful enough to depict characters that we can empathize with, a writer who can depict the people we know, but within the circumstances of an alternative future.
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2 comments:
Or you might argue that the kind of author interested in creating a full-scale vision of an alternate future can't always narrow their focus to individual human interaction, since these futures are not usually (believably) created by just a few people. Though it is a little suspicious that middle-aged men like Callenbach and Robinson both seem inordinately concerned with which future-women will be having sex with their hapless male protagonists.
Another utopia fiction of interest to the architecturally-minded is William Morris's News from Nowhere, which imagines an idyllic future based on a exodus from the city and a return to hand crafts.
Great blog, Dave! Wish I understood more of it.
Elizabeth
I find Utopias based on a uniform code of behavior to be both seductive and frightening. The desire for social harmony tends to want to repress individual differences. Perhaps those writers whose focus is the functionings of society, are inherently less interested in the unique path of the individual.
Although many possible futures are imaginable, one indispuatble trend is towards greater diversity of lifestyles and greater freedom. I think any future in which individual freedom is greatly curtailed is not likely to be a happy one. From an environmental perspective, the question is how can we live free, self-determined lives without exhausting the environment which sustains us. In my mind, the most likely solution is one that is a lot like we live today, but with a much greater attention/cost/concern to our environmental footprint.
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