I first read this book in the summer of 1994 while I was working in Provincetown, Mass. It seemed as if everyone was reading it.
Looking back, it feels rather silly how frightening the book was. I was terrified that the future as shown by Starhawk would come to pass. But at the same time, the struggle continues between love and fear, abundance thinking and a lack mentality, war and peace. Starhawk asks us this question: what if we offered our enemies a place at our table?
The basic story is this: It's the year 2049. What we know as the U.S. has collapsed. Transportation and communication infrastructures are mostly gone. California is divided into three areas that are isolated from the rest of the world
The Bay Area has evolved into a set of self-determining city states which are highly democratic and are governed by consensus. They are fully sustainable economies where all labor and reward is shared through an intricate system of credits.
San Francisco is the center of the story. The main characters are members of an extended family that live in a house and whose matriarch is nearing 100 years of age, so she offers a powerful historical perspective.
Meanhwhile, Angel City (formerly Los Angeles – Spanish has been banned and all names converted to English) is under the control of the Stewards, an oligarchical group of corporate owners, and their religious equivalent, the Millenialists. It seems that in the 2020s, a series of ecological disasters coupled with earthquakes devasted the region. While, the Stewards were driven out of San Francisco, they took hold in the Southlands. Now, they run a corporatist state reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
The Central Coast is a seemingly uninhabited area due to contamination from a leaking nuclear power plant. And all of the Central Valley is ruined and can no longer support human life.
The narrative story of The Fifth Sacred Thing begins with the struggles of a San Francisco musician who is captured by the Stewards while sabotaging a nuclear power plant and eventually escapes back north.
Shortly after he returns to San Francisco, the Stewards begin an invasion from the south.
The story then becomes about the struggle between the forces of might and the inhabitants of a city with no physical defenses. How they defend their city is the crux of the matter.
Starhawk is a mighty storyteller and this book is very mesmerizing. It is an allegory of our times in many ways. And an interesting and captivating novel that weaves love, politics, religion, spirituality, sexuality, and a love for the planet in very unexpected ways.
I highly recommend this book.
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(1)
I first read this book in the summer of 1994 while I was working in Provincetown, Mass. It seemed as if everyone was reading it.
Looking back, it feels rather silly how frightening the book was. I was terrified that the future as shown by Starhawk would come to pass. But at the same time, the struggle continues between love and fear, abundance thinking and a lack mentality, war and peace. Starhawk asks us this question: what if we offered our enemies a place at our table?
The basic story is this: It's the year 2049. What we know as the U.S. has collapsed. Transportation and communication infrastructures are mostly gone. California is divided into three areas that are isolated from the rest of the world
The Bay Area has evolved into a set of self-determining city states which are highly democratic and are governed by consensus. They are fully sustainable economies where all labor and reward is shared through an intricate system of credits.
San Francisco is the center of the story. The main characters are members of an extended family that live in a house and whose matriarch is nearing 100 years of age, so she offers a powerful historical perspective.
Meanhwhile, Angel City (formerly Los Angeles – Spanish has been banned and all names converted to English) is under the control of the Stewards, an oligarchical group of corporate owners, and their religious equivalent, the Millenialists. It seems that in the 2020s, a series of ecological disasters coupled with earthquakes devasted the region. While, the Stewards were driven out of San Francisco, they took hold in the Southlands. Now, they run a corporatist state reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
The Central Coast is a seemingly uninhabited area due to contamination from a leaking nuclear power plant. And all of the Central Valley is ruined and can no longer support human life.
The narrative story of The Fifth Sacred Thing begins with the struggles of a San Francisco musician who is captured by the Stewards while sabotaging a nuclear power plant and eventually escapes back north.
Shortly after he returns to San Francisco, the Stewards begin an invasion from the south.
The story then becomes about the struggle between the forces of might and the inhabitants of a city with no physical defenses. How they defend their city is the crux of the matter.
Starhawk is a mighty storyteller and this book is very mesmerizing. It is an allegory of our times in many ways. And an interesting and captivating novel that weaves love, politics, religion, spirituality, sexuality, and a love for the planet in very unexpected ways.
I highly recommend this book.