Ernest Callenbach was an American writer and simple living adherent. Born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, he attended the University of Chicago, where he was drawn into the then 'new wave' of serious attention to film as an art form. After six months in Paris at the Sorbonne, watching four films a day, he returned to Chicago and earned a Master’s degree in English and Communications. Callenbach then moved to California. From 1955 to 1991, he was on the staff of the University of California Press . A general copywriter for a number of years, he edited the Press's Film Quarterly from 1958... until 1991. He also occasionally taught film courses at U.C. and at San Francisco State University. For many years Callenbach edited the Natural History Guides at the U.C. Press. He began to take environmental issues and their connections to human value systems, social patterns, and lifestyles just as seriously as he had taken film. He was heavily influenced by Edward Abbey. He is therefore known as an author of green books, namely as author of the ecological utopias Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging .
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