Samuel Butler’s most critically acclaimed novel, Erewhon, or, Over the Range, is set in the fictional country of Erewhon, an anagram of ‘nowhere.’ Butler crafts a mesmerizing narrative centered around a protagonist’s journey through this seemingly utopian society. Initially, Erewhon appears idyllic-a place where money holds prestige but lacks purchasing power and nature is unspoiled by machines, which are banned due to their perceived threat to survival. Yet, the protagonist soon uncovers layers of religious insincerity and institutional flaws that shatter the illusion of perfection. In this topsy-turvy world, disease is a cause for imprisonment and crime is treated as an illness. Erewhon is frequently compared to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels in its satirical send-up of hypocritical society, but Butler goes further and does something altogether original in anticipating DNA testing and artificial intelligence-making Erewhon a groundbreaking work of speculative fiction. In addition to George Bernard Shaw, who is widely considered his chief disciple, Butler influenced and inspired other writers, including Aldous Huxley, E. M. Forster, Somerset Maugham, H. G. Wells, and Dorothy Richardson.
This volume reproduces the expanded and definitive edition of Erewhon issued in 1901. It also contains the full text of Butler’s article ‘Darwin among the Machines, ‘ which provided the basis for his eerily prescient chapters on machine learning and consciousness, as well as a detailed biographical timeline.
Tabella dei contenuti
Contents
Preface to the First Edition
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the Revised Edition
Chapter I. Waste Lands
Chapter II. In the Wool-Shed
Chapter III. Up the River
Chapter IV. The Saddle
Chapter V. The River and the Range
Chapter VI. Into Erewhon
Chapter VII. First Impressions
Chapter VIII. In Prison
Chapter IX. To the Metropolis
Chapter X. Current Opinions
Chapter XI. Some Erewhonian Trials
Chapter XII. Malcontents
Chapter XIII. The Views of the Erewhonians Concerning Death
Chapter XIV. Mahaina
Chapter XV. The Musical Banks
Chapter XVI. Arowhena
Chapter XVII. Ydgrun and the Ydgrunites
Chapter XVIII. Birth Formulae
Chapter XIX. The World of the Unborn
Chapter XX. What They Mean By It
Chapter XXI. The Colleges of Unreason
Chapter XXII. The Colleges of Unreason-Continued
Chapter XXIII. The Book of the Machines
Chapter XXIV. The Machines-Continued
Chapter XXV. The Machines-Continued
Chapter XXVI. The Views of an Erewhonian Prophet Concerning the Rights of Animals
Chapter XXVII. The Views of an Erewhonian Philosopher Concerning the Rights of Vegetables
Chapter XXVIII. Escape
Chapter XXIX. Conclusion
‘Darwin among the Machines’ by Samuel Butler
Biographical Timeline
Circa l’autore
Samuel Butler (1835-1901) was an English novelist, essayist, and critic whose satire Erewhon (1872) foreshadowed the collapse of the Victorian illusion of eternal progress and influenced every significant writer of utopian/dystopian fiction that followed. His autobiographical novel, The Way of All Flesh (1903), is generally considered a masterpiece.
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