Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston by Ernest Callenbach

In the Anarchist Library

The story as told by a reporter from the remaining United States visiting Ecotopia -- the seceded northwest bio-region of Northern California, Oregon, and Washington -- after 20 years of isolationism. His objective skepticism is quickly eroded by this new green world in which respect for living things is the society's primary value.

A bit naive. It is like Callenbach paved the way for our current silly belief in green capitalism. The message: We can do everything we do now in more or less the same way, but we can do it differently and sustainably and green.

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin

In the Anarchist Library

This is an thoughtful and nuanced science fiction book that happens to take the idea of anarchism (a socialist-anarchist flavor) seriously enough to give us a whole planet.

What is a word for a utopia that isn't a utopia? Not a distopia either. Just a simple 'topia. A view of a world and how it might be. Things that work and things that don't. Excellent ideas and really bad ones. That's what this story is about. An anarchist society on the moon, that leaves all us Capitalists and propertarians down here on this troubled sphere to fend for ourselves.

If you've read The Fountainhead in the last ten years, this is the antidote. (Review by Wes)

311 pages 
Published July 1975 by Avon Books