AGAINST APOCALYPSE

Berkeley in the early 1970s was a hotbed of hope. On good days, the place was like a really nice acid trip crossed with a successful political protest. But for Ernest Callenbach, a science-book editor, the city’s utopianism stood in stark contrast to reality. The scientists he published at the University of California Press were predicting environmental collapse from pollution and wildlife extinctions. Meanwhile, his marriage was unraveling. And yet Callenbach didn’t give in to despair; instead, he decided to remake the world.

Callenbach wrote an odd, awkward little novel called Ecotopia, about a near-future separatist nation comprising Northern California, Oregon, and Washington. Ecotopia was run by a female president, and its technology was entirely renewable, with an internet-like network linking everyone and carbon-neutral public transit. The region’s prisons had been shut down by black activists and its economy converted into a stable-state system inspired by recycling. Involuntary homelessness was impossible, because giant 3-D printers extruded biodegradable buildings at no cost. Plus, everyone was having great, consensual sex.

Nobody wanted to publish the