Y3K

Ecological, communal eutopia set in 2999. The eutopia arose after the complete collapse of the world’s ecology, and there is a movement to reinstitute the policies that led to the collapse. There is a flourishing communal movement, and the novel follows one elderly communard as he fights the changes and visits some of the communal sites affiliated with his home community in the forest in Oregon. All but one of the urban sites of this community is paired with a rural one. The community is mostly vegetarian and much of the more-or-less flat land open to the sun are organic gardens. Everyone is expected to work about fifteen hours a week, and if they do so at any of the communities’ home sites “they can be assured of all of life’s basic material needs” (13). Everyone has a private space. All adults assume responsibility for all the children, who, due to the isolation of the community, are home-schooled, although many children choose to transfer to an urban community to attend school. The community is expected to care for the land and the watershed, maintain trails, respond to forest fires, and so forth, and if it does so and reside on the land continuously for twenty years, it is granted permanent use. The first part of the novel includes an extremely detailed description of the Oregon community and daily life there, and then follows the protagonist to Portland, Oregon, which is described as “A Natural City”. Much of the rest part of the novel is driven by an attempt to return to the policies that led to the collapse and the resistance to it. Although most people live to about 150, the world population is stabilized at 1.7 billion and the size of cities is shrinking. Energy is solar, biofuels, windmills, small hydro generators, and other means depending on the location and weather patterns. Buildings are built to last hundreds of years. The average life span is 153 years. All public transportation in North America is free. Universal freedom to travel anywhere in the world. The author lived in an intentional community in Oregon for five years.

The author lived in an Oregon intentional community for five years.