Notes on 'The Webs of Varok' by Cary Neeper
Who knew sustainable economics could be so much fun? Served up with large helpings of adventure and novel romance, the post-growth society of Neeper’s complex but completely imagined world on a hidden moon of Jupiter is the setting for a page-turning struggle between the eternal themes of personal accumulation vs. the common good.
The evil Mahntik schemes to grow and dominate Varok’s economy, mindlessly replicating the mistakes of earthlings, from energy-intensive globalized trade to water pollution from the overuse of nitrate fertilizer. Fighting back is the inter-species family of varoks, humans and ellls recently returned from a station on Earth’s moon where they were unable to help prevent the disintegration of the unsustainable human economy of 2050 CE. The human example reinforces the lessons that varokian society learned millenia ago after the collapse of the equally unsustainable economy of their own forebears. Orram, the varok head of the mixed family, accepts the position of Governor of Living Resources and struggles to repair and reinforce the steady-state economic system that has allowed varokian society to evolve and thrive in the wake of that long-ago disaster.
—Kathy Campbell, past president, League of Women Voters New Mexico
Kathy Campbell co-taught a sustainbility course with Neeper in New Mexico in the early 2000s. She currently lives in central Massachusetts, where she is heartened to observe the emerging network of relocalization and sustainability efforts, from a system of cooperatives in Springfield to a transition town in Greenfield, and from Coop Power, solar building and alternative financing to the preservation of farmland, forests and wetlands in the broad Pioneer Valley.