Ecotopia

By (author): "Ernest Callenbach"
Publish Date: 1975
Ecotopia
ISBN0553261835
ISBN139780553261837
AsinEcotopia
CharactersWilliam Weston, Vera Allwen
Original titleEcotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston
"Ecotopia was founded when northern California, Oregon & Washington seceded from the Union to create a "stable-state" ecosystem: the perfect balance between human beings and the environment. Now, twenty years later, the isolated, mysterious Ecotopia welcomes its first officially sanctioned American visitor: New York Times-Post reporter Will Weston. Like a modern Gulliver, the skeptical Weston is by turns impressed, horrified, and overwhelmed by Ecotopia's strange  practices: employee ownership of farms & businesses, the twenty-hour work week, the fanatical elimination of pollution, "mini-cities" that defeat overcrowding, devotion to trees bordering  on worship, a woman-dominated government, & bloody, ritual war games. Bombarded by innovative, unsettling ideas, set afire by a relationship with a sexually forthright Ecotopian woman, Weston's conflict of values intensifies-and leads to a startling climax.