The Fifth Sacred Thing

by Starhawk, New York: Bantam Books, 1983, 484 pp.

Starhawk's novel of alternative futures is set in the year 2048. San Francisco--a racially diverse and lush ecological paradise--is uneasy. It is anticipating an invasion from the arid desert of the south (the greater Los Angeles area) where drug and steroid-laden military forces are forced by economic pressures, water shortages, and the nuclear havoc they have wrought, to take action against the exemplar to the north. Can the northern citizenry (organized as a neighborhood assembly, along the lines of traditional professional and workers' guilds, and advised by the all-female Council of Elders) find a nonviolent way to meet this threat?

Pure science fantasy and futuristic nonsense? A tract reminiscent of Bellamy's earnest Looking Backwards, or Ernest Callenbach's lyrical but aptly-named Ecotopia? No, though it certainly owes a debt to its predecessors as well as to the very real work in aquaculture going on in the Cape Cod area--the latter is explicitly acknowledged by Starhawk herself. And to the New Age/Native American lore on which she draws.

But here is an absorbing fictional account of two major protagonists (Madrone, a young doctor and widow who seeks medical answers by venturing into enemy territory; and Bird, an escapee from a penal colony where he has been imprisoned for repeated acts of civil disobedience against the San Diablo nuclear reactor) as well as a host of minor supporting characters. My favorites are all strong women--in particular, Lily, a member of the Council of Elders, who is instrumental both by rhetoric and example in showing that nonviolence can work, though not without a cost. The book is literally one of those "page turners" that come highly recommended as summer reading; this reader hardly noticed, in fact, that lessons on ecology, economic sustainability, racial diversity, and nonviolence were being taught along the way.

Are the major arguments--over nonviolence and ecology--convincing and practical? In regard to the latter, yes. Most of the technology (water recycling, aquaculture, high swinging gondolas along with vigorous walking as alternative transportation, etc.) have been around for a long time. They seem practical, at least on a regional scale. And the egalitarian racial and economic arrangements--while visionary, to say the least--are certainly within our reach. (Readers should be warned, however, that the social and gender arrangements, depicted in a loving and nonexploitive way, are sure to offend conservative sensiblities.) I found the arguments over nonviolent tactics, as distinguished from the values or goals--and especially the argument over the possibility of redemption of former enemies--to be somewhat less convincing, given the futuristic context. But this is a small quibble. I admit I would be hard put to match them with my own. I will thus allow the readers of Peacework (and my own students, to whom I am assigning the novel in the fall term) to judge for themselves.

I conclude on a note of irony: I cannot fault Starhawk for her writing ability (though I would cut the work by about 10%) but I must ask the question I raised in print some years ago. Why is it that even in an avowedly communitarian novel we need protagonists as heroic individualists? The qualities in Starhawk's work that make Bellamy and Callenbach seem dull by comparison are the very same ones that we decry in popular culture with its larger than life characters. Perhaps we (or at least I) are more apt students of our own individualistic/heroic culture than we are prepared to admit.

--Betty Zisk

Previous Article    Next Article