LITR 5439 Literary & Historical Utopias Instructor's Presentation Marge Piercy Woman on the Edge of Time (1976)

1960s as period of hippie & Jesus-freak communes

1970s as period of great utopian fiction

(most of these texts are too long for summer school)

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974); Always Coming Home (1985)

Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia (1975)

Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time (1976)

Samuel R. Delany, Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia (1976)

Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time (1976)

Settings: NYC apartment house, mental hospital in 60s-70s, ecotopian commune 1-2 centuries future

Characters:

present-day: Consuelo (Connie) Ramos, her 20-something daughter & grandchild, residents and officials of mental hospital

future: Luciente, medium who travels from future to past, bringing Connie to future

+ utopian citizens who resemble characters in mental ward

motive for time travel: Utopians want Connie's world to change, show her impact of 20c life on future

points of interest:

off-on war between ecotopian commune and corporate-world technology

ecotopia mixes low-tech and high-tech, primitive social structures + eugenics

Marge Piercy homepage

Greenman review of Woman on the Edge of Time

Frank Lloyd Wright, Falling Water