Clementa: utopia on Earth

A lot has happened on Earth between now and 2361, when Ernest of Dezrett goes roaming with a band of Utes. Earth’s forests have grown back, its plants and animals gone wild. Nature is flourishing—and so is humankind, its genius expressed in hundreds of local cultures and a vibrant cosmopolis.

Agriculture has been abandoned. Money has been forgotten.

Or so we gather, as Ernest, the lead narrator in Clementa, recounts his adventures. He’s writing for his contemporaries, not for us, so he doesn’t need to tell them what they already know; but we see their world and infer how it got to be that way.

All along, though, the story’s the thing. It’s a first-hand account of how the oppressed women in one secluded homeland awaken to their rage and rise in rebellion. We come to know several characters well, both oppressed and oppressors, as they blunder and prevail, wound and heal, kill and love in this epic struggle for—and against—liberation.