Ernest Callenbach, ‘Ecotopia’ author, dies in California at 83

Ernest “Chick’’ Callenbach, a film scholar who wrote the novel “Ecotopia,’’ a 1975 underground classic that inspired generations of environmentalists and readers yearning for an ecologically sustainable society, has died in California. He was 83. His wife, Christine Leefeldt, said Thursday he died of cancer on April 16 in Berkeley.