Always Coming Home is an unconventional 1985 novel by Ursula K. Le Guin.
A utopian book. I finally finished it. The best thing in the book is the very last poem. Having half California sunk in the sea was whimsical, but having leftover genetic diseases from pollution was too moralistic. I thought having the computer Exchange was kind of muddy. Le Guin didn’t quite catch the whole richness and confusion of a very different culture—the kind I get when I read, say, African stories in un-Europeanized translation. But she’s done about twenty times better than anybody else! Recommended reading, if you can spare fifteen minutes an evening for a long time.
Original version, 1994 or earlier.
Updated and added here January 2012.