Erewhon
Erewhon is a novel by Samuel Butler published in 1872. The title is also the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist. In the novel it is not revealed in which part of the world Erewhon is, but reversing the name of the country makes clear that it is a fictional country. The first few chapters of the novel, dealing with the discovery of Erewhon, are in fact based on Samuel Butler's own experiences in New Zealand, where as a young man he was a sheep farmer for about four years (1860-1864) and where he explored the interior of the South Island.The greater part of the book consists of a description of Erewhon. As this is a country that does not exist, the book may be called a utopia. However, unlike many utopian books Erewhon does not describe an ideal society. Neither is it a dystopia (or anti-utopia), describing an undesirable society (as does George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four). As a satirical utopia Erewhon has sometimes been compared to Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift, also in fact a satirical look at the society the author lived in.
Erewhon satirizes various aspects of Victorian era society, including criminal punishment, religion and anthropocentrism. In Erewhon law-offenders are treated as if they were ill, while ill people are looked upon as offenders, for example. Another feature of Erewhon is that there are no machines, because they are considered to be dangerous: they might develop consciousness and supersede humankind. This last aspect of Erewhon reveals the influence of Charles Darwin's evolution theory. Samuel Butler had read The Origin of Species soon after it was published in 1859.
The three chapters of Erewhon that make up "The Book of the Machines" were developed from a number of articles that Butler had contributed to a local periodical while in New Zealand. Butler was the first to write about the possibility that machines develop consciousness. To him it was a joke, but today scientists and philosophers are seriously debating whether computers and robots could develop the same kind of intelligence and consciousness as human beings. This is known as artificial intelligence and artificial life. It is also a popular theme in science-fiction novels and movies, but rather than wondering whether artificial intelligence (or AI) and artificial life are possible, they raise the question what the relationship between human beings and machines with artificial intelligence would be (and whether the development of artificial intelligence is desirable at all).
Erewhon has many more curious aspects, such as the "Musical Banks" (this chapter of the novel is an attack on religious hypocrisy), and the notion that children choose their parents. In 1901 a revised edition of Erewhon was published with some new parts, including some new chapters. Among them are two chapters in which vegetarianism is tackled. This revised edition is available in paperback and as an etext from Project Gutenberg [1]