Enviroreductio ad Absurdam

Book Review: Envirotopia

Walking. Boredom. Hunger. That’s the life of Eugene Ward, protagonist of Envirotopia.

In a hugely entertaining novel, American Thinker contributor Kyle Nathaniel Alfred Becker portrays a grim future which projects the ideology of the environmental movement to its logical conclusion. “Eugene Ward was a member of a group,” the book begins. “Group 3124, as a matter of fact, which was unbeknownst to him. What he did know was that he had been wandering in the wilderness for as long as he could remember.”

Eugene knew nothing of how he came to be in the group, of the technologies that had once existed on earth, or where the new socks that occasionally seemed to appear in his knapsack came from. He only knew that a false step on a mountain trail meant death and any infraction of the group’s rules meant harsh punishment at the hand’s of the shaman Logan and his guardians.

But there’s something different about Eugene. When he’s caught giving some blueberries to a starving mother and her child instead of turning the berries over to the group, he refuses to accept his punishment. Instead he challenges Logan’s authority. This rebellion leads him on a path to discover that neither the world – nor his place in it – are what they seem.

Becker’s writing is beautiful. His descriptions of nature are lush and vivid, and the ECO-NOW Council, which monitors Eugene's every move, is staffed by unique and colorful characters. But this is also a novel of ideas. Becker offers keen insight into the philosophy underlying environmentalism and is adept at weaving it into his story without being preachy. In particular, he understands that environmentalism is not merely an attack on technology. It’s also an attack on individualism and rationality – and environmentalists must wipe those things out in order to achieve their goals.

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com