The Fifth Sacred Thing
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The Fifth Sacred Thing (ISBN 0-553-37380-3) is a 1993 post-apocalyptic novel written by Starhawk. It describes a world set in the year 2048 after a catastrophe which has fractured the United States into at least several nations. The protagonists of the story are located in San Francisco and have evolved in the direction of Ecotopia, reverting to a sustainable economy, using wind power, local agriculture, and the like. To the south, though, an overtly-theocratic Christian fundamentalist nation has evolved and plans to wage war against the San Franciscans. The novel explores the events before and during the ensuing struggle between the two nations.
The story is primarily told from the points of view of Maya, a 98-year-old woman living in San Francisco, her nominal granddaughter, Madrone, and her grandson Bird. Through Maya and the other characters, the story explores many elements from ecofeminism and ecotopian fiction.
The name of the story is derived from the four elements of fire, earth, air, and water plus an additional element revealed as the plot unfolds.
This novel eerily predicts the recent efforts of corporations to control water; in recent years figureheads in Bolivia `sold` the nation's water rights to Bechtel, a private corporation. The people rebelled and declared the sale both unethical and fundamentally impossible and created the Cochabamba declaration.
In the novel, San Francisco is a mostly pagan city where the streets have been torn up for gardens and streams, no one starves or is homeless, and the city's defense council consists primarily of nine elderly women who "listen and dream".
In 1997, Starhawk wrote a prequel, Walking to Mercury (ISBN 0-553-10233-8).
