Ernest Callenbach

Ernest Callenbach founded Film Quarterly in 1958 and edited it for thirty-three years from the University of California Press, and the novel he is remembered for was written alongside that job. Ecotopia, which no publisher would take, appeared in 1975 after he raised the money to issue it himself. It imagines Northern California, Oregon and Washington seceding to build a society run on recycling, solar power and a shorter working week, and it found a readership the industry had not known was there. Ecotopia Emerging, from 1981, is the prequel rather than a sequel: it goes back to the years before the break to show how the secession was argued for and won, with a cheap solar catalyst doing much of the work. Born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania in 1929, he died in Berkeley in April 2012.