Cory Doctorow, the uber-blogger and award-winning science-fiction writer, says that all science fiction is about the present. That truism shows itself repeatedly in "World Made by Hand," a novel by James Howard Kunstler set in a post-oil, post-climate-change, post-pandemic, and post-holy-war future that's not too far off.

WESTPORT - When Phillip Burgess gets an idea in his head, he's not
likely to let go. Consider how he wound up in the kitchen of celebrity
chef Todd English.

Though a commercial real estate broker by vocation, Burgess likes to
cook, and decided that he wanted to work for English. "So I basically
hounded him for a year, and after I caught up with him at the opening
of Figs on Charles Street, he relented. I ended up as a line cook at
Olives on Tuesday nights for two years. Pro bono, of course," Burgess
said.

Like a lot of their friends and neighbors, Lorelei Grazier and Betty
Fulton wanted to green up their lifestyle. But they weren't sure how to
proceed.

"We both felt it can be overwhelming; can one person really change
the world?" Grazier said. "We realized the way to empower a person is
to give them practical information to change their lives."

LAWRENCE - With its huge "Think Green, Live Green" banner and its
blocks-long mass of space being converted into "ecoluxury" residential
and commercial space, Monarch on the Merrimack is the grandest example
of this city's plan to go green.

But while the developer of the former Wood Mill has paused to
arrange new financing, a much more modest project - a three-bedroom,
2-bath home built in pieces in a factory and assembled onsite in less
than a day - opens to the public today just around the corner.