Editing Ecotopia (section)

==Impact==
The importance of this book is not so much its literary style as in the lively imagination of an alternative and ecologically sound lifestyle on a greater scale, presented more or less realistically.  It expressed on paper the dream of an alternative future held by many in the movements of the 1970s and later.  Even the names of the two characters most reflective of their respective viewpoints—"Will West(on)", the representative for materialist American culture and "Vera Allwen" (= "All women + all men"), the President and spokeswoman for Ecotopia—suggest the degree to which the author intended the book to be a reflection of what he saw as American ecological and cultural deficiencies.{{Citation needed|date=July 2020}}

However, in contrast to much of the Green movement in contemporary America, with its preference for regulation, Callenbach's Ecotopia has relatively laissez-faire economic tendencies, guided by intense moral pressure toward sustainable practices both in private life and in business.{{Citation needed|date=July 2020}}

In 1981, Callenbach published ''[[Ecotopia Emerging]]'', a multi-strand "prequel" suggesting how the sustainable nation of Ecotopia could have come into existence.{{Citation needed|date=July 2020}}

In 1990, Audio Renaissance released a partial dramatization of ''Ecotopia'' on audiocassettes in the form of recordings of a radio network broadcast (the ''Allied News Network'' replacing the ''Times-Post''). The tape-recorded diaries of William Weston were read by the book's author, Ernest Callenbach. Weston's reports were read by veteran news reporter [[Edwin Newman]].

In the online ''Earth Island Journal'', ''Ecotopia'' was reviewed by Brian Smith, identifying himself as a child not of the 1960s but the 1980s.  He read the novel 30 years after it was first published, and said of it: "I felt great affinity for the details of the world Callenbach predicted. Even better, I was impressed by how many of his ideas came to pass."<ref name="A Child of Dystopia Reads Ecotopia">{{cite web |author=Smith, Brian |title=A Child of Dystopia Reads Ecotopia |url=http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/a_child_of_dystopia_reads_ecotopia/ |access-date=2013-04-21}}</ref> influenced the identity of the West Coast in an interesting way and influenced the rise of [[bioregionalism]] and started the desire for West Coast unity in the form of [[Cascadia movement|Cascadia]].

''Ecotopia'' is now required reading in a number of colleges.<ref name="timberg" />