Editing Ecotopia (section)

==Plot summary==
The book is set in 1999 (25 years in the future from 1974) and consists of diary entries and reports of journalist William Weston, who is the first American [[mainstream media]] reporter to investigate Ecotopia, a small country that [[secession|broke away]] from the [[United States]] in 1980 following an economic collapse. Prior to Weston's reporting, most Americans had been barred from entering the new country, which is depicted as being on continual guard against [[revanchism]].  The new nation of Ecotopia consists of [[Northern California]], [[Oregon]], and [[Washington (state)|Washington]]; it is hinted that [[Southern California]] is a lost cause, and was most likely destroyed.  The novel takes its form as a narrative from Weston's diary in combination with dispatches that he transmits to his publication, the fictional ''Times-Post''.

At the beginning, Weston is skeptically curious about, not yet sympathetic to the Ecotopians.  He describes details of the Ecotopian transportation system and the preferred lifestyle.  This includes a wide range of gender roles, [[Sexual norm|sexual freedom]], and acceptance of non-monogamous relationships.  Liberal [[cannabis (drug)|cannabis]] use is evident.  Televised passive, mass-media, spectator sports have been displaced in favor of local arts coverage, local participatory sports, and general fitness.  A large fraction of young male Ecotopians participate voluntarily in a decidedly male ritual of mock warfare using wooden spears but no guns or arrows.  The games are not re-enactments.  Physical injuries, occasionally serious, are considered part of the game. Ecotopians on the whole value the benefits to young males over the accidental injuries.  Ecotopia also tolerates the voluntary separatism of many people of African descent who have, in fact, chosen to live in a mini-nation in the San Francisco [[East Bay]] area in order to protect themselves from racism.

Ecotopian society has favored decentralized and renewable energy production and green building construction.  The citizens are technologically creative, while remaining involved with and sensitive to nature.  Thorough-going education reform is described, along with a highly localized system of universal medical care. (The narrator discovers that Ecotopian healing practices may include sexual stimulation.) The national defense strategy has focused on developing a highly advanced arms industry, while also allegedly maintaining hidden [[Weapon of mass destruction|WMD]] within major US population centers to discourage conquest and annexation.

Through Weston's diary we learn of observations he does not include in his columns, such as his personally transformative love affair with an Ecotopian woman.  The book's parallel narrative structures allow the reader to see how Weston's internal reflections, as recorded in his diary, are diffracted in his external pronouncements to his readers.  Despite Weston's initial reservations, throughout the novel Ecotopian citizens are characterized as clever, technologically resourceful, emotionally expressive, and even occasionally violent – but also socially responsible, patriotic.  They often live in extended families, and tend to live by choice in ethnically separated localities.  Their economic enterprises are generally employee-owned and -controlled.  The current governmental administration is that of a woman-led (but not exclusively female) party, and government structures are highly decentralized.

The novel concludes with Weston's finding himself enchanted by Ecotopian life and deciding to stay in Ecotopia as its interpreter to the wider world.