Windmill Power

The Boy Scout Handbook of the counterculture movement was The Last Whole Earth Catalog, published in 1971, which told the dropout generation where to get the information to do its own thing--cultivate organic food, build geodesic domiciles, grow pot. The volume went through 14 printings, sold 1.2 million copies, won a prestigious National Book Award and turned Publisher Stewart Brand, 35, into an old-fashioned capitalist.

But times change and revolutionaries mellow. So Brand has brought out a new volume titled The Whole Earth Epilog, which subtly reflects the greening of yesterday's rebels. "Five years later," notes Brand, "we find the counterculture is a lot more sophisticated. There are still a lot of our readers who are into communes, but many others are now interested in building communities and running for the town council. So we've got pages and pages on things like sewage, my God!"

Epilog offers specific advice on consumer problems, business, computers, the women's movement and avoiding rape, as well as information on social issues involving prisoners and Indians. Instead of home building, the emphasis of the new volume has drifted to establishing such alternative forms of energy as windmill power and solar-heated houses. Rather than explaining the ins and outs of how to get and use drugs, Epilog provides the names of laboratories where its readers can have their drugs analyzed anonymously. To be sure, there is still a manual for marijuana growers, but beating inflation comes first.

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