Ben G. Price

About Ben G. Price

Ben G. Price, author of "Ogden: A Tale for the End of Time" and "How Wealth Rules the World: Saving Our Communities and Freedoms from the Dictatorship of Property."

"Ogden: A Tale for the End of Time" is an epic fantasy full of elemental magic which tells a provocative tale about how an emissary from the Spirit of Nature arrives in the early days of industrialization, in the form of a young troll, to judge humanity's fitness for survival, or to doom us to extinction.

The inspiration for "Ogden: A Tale for the End of Time "has roots in my real-life experience, which is a story unique in its own right. "Ogden" tells the story of how modern people, whose predecessors for eons lived as a part of Nature, are fast approaching extinction by the will of the elemental spirits for having chosen to live apart from Nature, while living parasitically upon it. in their synthetic environments.

I have worked professionally, since 2004, as a community rights organizer in the United States, assisting municipalities, counties and states to draft and enact laws that advance the right of local self-government. In 2006 I participated in drafting the first law adopted by any government that recognizes legal rights for Nature. Working closely with Borough Council and community members in a rural municipality nestled in Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal country, we put Tamaqua, Pennsylvania in the history books as the first place on Earth to recognize ecosystems – like forests and rivers – to be rights-bearing entities with a legal status beyond that of mere property. I say it made history with full confidence that the intrepid act of democratic law-making by this tiny, rural community has had an unexpected world-wide impact. I didn’t know it at the time, but adoption of this innovative local law by an obscure Pennsylvania municipality was to be the beginning of the global movement for the legal Rights of Nature.

Writing "Ogden" has been a labor of love quite different from my non-fiction works on Nature and modern humanity's relationship to the other-than-human world. Accessible, entertaining, and spirited, it none-the-less delivers a powerful message.