Dystopia/Utopia: the

1
Dystopia/Utopia the 60s and Nature

• Intro Concerning Hobbits
• The Comfortable World of Postwar Nature
• Beauty, Health, and Permanence
• Small is Beautiful
• Protest Survival
• Stand on Zanzibar

2
Concerning Hobbits

• What is going on here that is of interest to us?
  
• What are Tolkien/Jackson saying about nature
  versus industry?

3
Concerning Hobbits

• Hobbits the love peace and quiet and good
  tilled earth a well-ordered and well-farmed
  countryside was their favourite haunt. They
  did not understand or like machines more
  complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill,
  or a hand-loom
• beauty, health and permanence

4
Postwar Nature

• Proserity
• Bambi and Lassie
• Cars
• Parks
• Suburbs
• Ecology and threats

5
Beauty, Health, Permanence

• High Profile Disasters
• The death of Lake Erie?
• Cuyahoga River Fire (1969)
• Oil spills
• Defoliants
• Mothers milk
• OPEC oil crisis
• The Earth from Space

6
Small is Beautiful

• E.F. Schumacher Small is Beautiful Economics
  as if People Mattered (1973)
• Hippies authenticity

7
Small is Beautiful

• Charles Riech, The Greening of America
• a renewed relationship of man to himself, to
  other men, to society, to nature, and to the
  land.
• John Denver Rocky Mountain High
• An ecologist and a strip miner would have been
  able to leave Mr. Denvers concert with equally
  clear consciences (NY Times)

8
Small is Beautiful

• Farley Mowatt
• The Dog Who Wouldnt Be
• Never Cry Wolf (1963)
• A Whale for the Killing (1972)

9
Protest, Legislate, Survive

• Neighbourhood groups
• Dont Make a Wave
• Growth in environmental groups from 500,000 to
  2.5 million, 1970-85
• Earth Day, 1970

10
Protest, Legislate, Survive

• Legislation
• Environmental Protection Agency (1970)
• Clean Air Act (1972)
• Acts to deal with pesticides, etc
• Endangered Species Act (1973)
• Superfund (1980)
• Dept of the Environment (1971)

11
Stand on Zanzibar

• Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (1968)
• Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth (1972)

12
Fantasy

• C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
• J.R.R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings

13
Sudbury Mordor?
14
Science Fiction

• The Golden Age
• Isaac Asimov
• The Winnowing, (1976)
• The New Wave
• Harry Harrison Make Room! Make Room!
• Soylent Green (1973)
• John Brunner
• Stand on Zanzibar
• The Sheep Look Up
• Frank Herbert, Dune
• Star Trek
• Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia