Solarpunk discussion

In the alternate future reality of 1999 Northern California, Oregon, and Washington have long since broken from the Union to become Ecotopia!

From Wikipedia: The society described in the book is one of the first ecological utopias and was influential on the counterculture and the green movement in the 1970s and thereafter.

Starting!

6% in, San Francisco.

"Market Street, once a mighty boulevard striking through the city down to the waterfront, has become a mall planted with thousands of trees. The "street" itself, on which electric taxis, minibuses, and delivery carts purr along, has shrunk to a two-lane affair. The remaining space, which is huge, is occupied by bicycle lanes, fountains, sculptures, kiosks, and absurd little gardens surrounded by benches."

I would dearly love to see more of these conversions.

20% in. This book is fresh! Thus it must have been a hell of a thing when it came out!

"According to him, women in Ecotopia have totally escaped the dependent roles they still tend to play with us. Not that they domineer over men—but they exercise power in work and in relationships just as men do. Above all, they don't have to manipulate men: the Survivalist Party, and social developments generally, have arranged the society so that women's objective situation is equal to men's. Thus people can be just people, without our symbolic loading on sex roles."

Loving this place, want to visit.
Stoping at 25% for the day.

Yay, I'm so excited to start this one! Just cleaning up from my brief hiatus and then I'll be able to dive right in. From what you've posted so far this looks really, really good.

Yes! I was a little afraid it would be like the catastrophe of watching Austin Powers before Doctor No.

But No!

This speculative fiction that could have been written last year!

Lena wrote: "Yes! I was a little afraid it would be like the catastrophe of watching Austin Powers before Doctor No.

But No!

This speculative fiction that could have been written last year!"

Absolutely - it doesn't read anything like 1975!

“Marissa says I’m squeamish about violence. Makes fun of American war technology, claims we had to develop it because we can no longer bear to just bayonet a man-have to spend $50,000 to avoid guilt, by zapping him from the stratosphere.”

How accurate is that?!?! It feels like he’s speaking of drone warfare decades beforehand.

Stopping at 45% for the day.

Coincidentally happened to be visiting San Francisco while reading the book this week. Found myself occasionally desperately wishing it was Ecotopia instead of the real thing even though I love SF. Also, I happened to visit the newspaper themed bar Local Edition while I was there, which was also very cool and apropos to the story. It’s fun when real life and fantasy overlap.

It is! The descriptions in the book really bring the idea to life. How nice to live without cars, to have a world designed for your health.

"Victimless" crimes such as prostitution, gambling, and drug use are no longer on the books, but embezzlement, fraud, collusion, and similar "gentleman's crimes" are dealt with just as severely as crimes like assault and robbery—which are, by the way, rare in Ecotopia...

Our parents should have read this in the 70s and made us a better world.

Stopping at 72% for the day.

I've finally started reading this and WOW - I'm completely blown away. This really doesn't feel like it was written in the seventies, and why, oh why, haven't enough people been listening??

I know! They could have fixed everything before we were born!

There’s even 3D Printing and FaceTime, the man was ahead.

I loved this book and will highly recommend it to everyone!
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Absolutely fantastic review. This book is so hard to read because just as you said - I love it, and I'm so, so sad I'm not living in it.

Thank you Fiona! Even the small things, how women are free and in control of their sexuality, aggression, emotion and bodies speaks of growing up in a better world.

Absolutely right! Really loving this book - the narrator's gradual turn of attitude is just blowing me away with how well done and realistic it is.

I finally put everything else aside and finished this off - wow. Yes, there's the odd bit here and there that could have been left in the seventies, but the amount that he got right! I note he also left Native American's and their reservations completely out of it, probably a wise choice for fiction as it brings a whole other level of complication. But as far as it applies to the real world I'd have been really interested to see his take on how that would have gone.

Probably another city country the way he said some of the more homogeneous enclaves we’re heading. Interesting that he echoed the old fear that large populations of Japanese would be more loyal to Japan than Ecotopia (USA). Manzanar was in California. Some fears die hard.

Thinking about it, he was closer to WWII than we are to him now, time-wise. Yikes!

Yes. And the Vietnam War would have been going on most of his life.

Dad being a pilot, he flew with a lot of Vietnam vets. They had some absolutely ridiculous stories - their bravery (and flying ability) was just astounding.
Now the helicopters in the story would be replaced with drones, I guess?

Because we can no longer stand to just bayonet a man, but we raise kids on gaming violence - the most popular is a military game:

This is not a coincidence.
On the other hand, did you ever read Armada?

Ahh, no I didnt, is it good? I do know a lot of drone pilots are recruited from the cod community :/ it's so manipulative