Author of "Ecotopia" dies. [View all]
Ernest "Chick" Callenbach, a film scholar who wrote the novel "Ecotopia," a 1975 underground classic that inspired generations of environmentalists and readers yearning for an ecologically sustainable society, has died in California. He was 83.
His wife, Christine Leefeldt, said Thursday he died of cancer on April 16 in Berkeley.
Callenbach initially raised money on his own to self-publish "Ecotopia," a hopeful vision of a new, environmentally conscious nation comprised of Northern California, Oregon and Washington, in which recycling and solar energy were commonplace, and electric cars were the only vehicles allowed.
Later reprinted by Bantam, the book was widely used in college classrooms and went on to sell nearly 1 million copies and be translated into a dozen languages.
"The ideas that came out of `Ecotopia' were so diverse and picked up by so many people that he was always astonished," Leefeldt said. "The thing that made him very, very proud was that it inspired several generations of writers, thinkers, schoolchildren, teachers and environmental groups."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/04/26/national/a125712D42.DTL
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