Ecotopian fiction

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (April 2008) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Ecotopian fiction is a subgenre of Utopian fiction where the author posits either a utopian or dystopian world revolving around environmental conservation or destruction.

Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia was the first example of this, followed by Callenbach's Ecotopia Emerging and Kim Stanley Robinson with his Three Californias Trilogy. Robinson has also edited a collection of short ecotopian fiction, called Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias. Other examples are Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing and Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home. Much of Sheri S. Tepper's work also centers on this theme as well as ecofeminism.

Ecotopian literature deals with themes of responsibility toward nature’s “web of life” and Planet Earth, as well as toward people. When set in modern times (as it usually is), the theme of appropriate use of technology is inevitably part of the story (it may actually be a main theme, or simply a sub-theme). As with any novel, the authors’ intent is that the stories are engaging in human terms, but issues of sensitivity to the environment, ethics, planning, and keeping things manageable (or within a human scale) are brought in.

Respected thinkers like Lewis Mumford, Aldous Huxley, Buckminster Fuller, Ivan Illich, Paul R. Ehrlich, and Hazel Henderson – many of them considered important pioneers – have thus had an influence on the Ecotopian authors.