Planet Earth’s future looks bleak, and so does humankind’s. In ecological terms, we’re overshooting the earth’s carrying capacity, which means we’re taking more out of the earth than natural processes can replenish. And meanwhile we’re polluting it with oil spills and changing its climate by spewing carbon into the air.

Why don’t we stop this abuse? Perhaps because we haven’t realized how miserable our descendants would be in a few generations if we kept it up. Perhaps we need to recognize that the glittering future worlds described in twentieth-century science fiction have become unbelievable, and the dystopias described by writers like Margaret Atwood are much more likely to come true.

Not that these dystopias are meant as prophecies. They’re meant as warnings: the writers believe we can stop abusing the earth. In fact, some isolated societies that had been overshooting their local environments did stop it. Jared Diamond tells about them in his book Collapse. He also tells about one society, Easter Island, that didn’t. It became a miserable a place to live indeed.

What if we heeded these warnings, stopped abusing the earth, and thus averted dystopia? Would that usher in the opposite of dystopia—utopia? Probably not. But when we reach the point where we humans are thriving in harmony with a flourishing nature, we could call it ecotopia.

Fiction set in dystopic future worlds gives warning. Fiction set in ecotopic future worlds, like Clementa, holds out hope.