EREWHON PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Samuel Butler | 192 pages | 28 Mar 2003 | Dover Publications Inc. | 9780486420486 | English | New York, United States Erewhon | Definition of Erewhon at Published September 13th first published More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Erewhon , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Erewhon Erewhon , 1. Mar 24, Manny rated it liked it Shelves: well-i-think-its-funny , linguistics-and-philosophy. I wonder if Margaret Atwood was thinking of Erewhon. Members of Erewhonian society are all obliged to sign a document at birth admitting that they have chosen to be born of their own free will, and obliging them to indemnify their parents for any trouble it may cause them. Other appealing ideas are the inverted treatment of crime and physical illness: if you embezzle money, you're given medical treatmen "I never asked to be born" says a character in The Blind Assassin , and is promptly corrected. Other appealing ideas are the inverted treatment of crime and physical illness: if you embezzle money, you're given medical treatment, but anyone foolish enough to contract pneumonia is sent to jail. It's still a fun read! View all 15 comments. Erewhon as a novel has a fairly thin but still interesting plot line in an intriguing environment. Unfortunately, meshing the two of these together makes for a difficult book to swallow at times. I enjoyed the thought provoking elements of the satire that Butler presents. He turns the world upside down in order to have us explore just how "civilized" we truly are. He maintains the same basic structure However, he turns all of these "normal" conventions on their heads to get us to think not about the conventions themselves, but about the way we approach them. For example, instead of being punished for what we crimes theft, murder, etc. And conversely, if a person finds himself in the throes of robbery or some other 'crime', he is instead consoled and properly treated for the recovery of this behavior and looked on with sympathy from friends and family. In this satirical move, Butler asks us to examine our treatment of criminals. The Erewhonians provide rehabilitation for liars, thieves and murderers while simply shutting away those who commit "crimes" of physical illness. While we profess to offer rehabilitation for our criminals, what good does it do to stick them in an 8x8 box for years and then throw them out on the street with a black mark on their "permanent record? As to illness, the Erewhonian treatment of illness is definitely ludicrous, but to a small degree it has logic in that it quarantines the truly ill and it also cuts down on people feigning illness or complaining over small headaches. In Erewhon, there is truly very little illness and no 'calling in sick', or making an excuse of "I've got a headache. His lengthiest satirical discourse is with regards to the idea of consciousness. He takes it to the absurd at least for his day by suggesting a world in which machines would become self-aware and potentially overthrow mankind as the dominant race a la Terminator or others. While the discussion on consciousness has some holes, it's also intriguing, especially when looking at the advancements of the last hundred years. He makes some good arguments and it's interesting to transition those arguments into the natural world and look at the advancements of mankind as a race or of other animals out there. The rise of consciousness or self-awareness is a very interesting topic. I'd be interested to read more of his thoughts since in the book he basically opens the can of worms and sets it on a shelf. So in terms of the satire, Butler brings forth some interesting ideas. In terms of the plot, it's a fairly basic adventure novel of the nineteenth century The first pages contain standard Victorian descriptions of the landscapes and the travels. While poetic and pretty, they did drag on and I wanted to skip beyond them. As our narrator finally gets closer to Erewhon, his travels actually have some drama unfold. Once he finally arrives at the city, he's initially thrown into prison and has some moderate adventure. The "adventures" he has in the country of Erewhon are very lightweight in terms of adventure. The level of excitement is pretty bland since it is often broken up by dozens of pages of satirical essay exploring strange elements of Erewhonian culture. Again, this is moderately typical of 19th century literature, but I was hoping for a bit more in terms of action within Erewhon itself. All in all, this was an interesting and thought provoking book View 2 comments. As an adventure narrative, Erewhon is a squib of the damp kind. As a satirical dystopia mocking the hypocrises of Victorian England, Erewhon is a squib of the damp kind. As a slice of narrative entertainment, Erewhon is a squib of the damp kind. As an exploration of a la mode science, encompassing automation, vegetarianism, education, breeding, and the criminal system, Erewhon is a squib of the damp kind. All round, in conclusion, you have to say, my fine haters and lovers, that Erewhon is a damp As an adventure narrative, Erewhon is a squib of the damp kind. All round, in conclusion, you have to say, my fine haters and lovers, that Erewhon is a damp squib, and even more boring than H. Now that is an achievement. View 1 comment. May 31, Douglas Summers-Stay rated it it was amazing Shelves: science-fiction , classic. I admit I skimmed over a lot of this book. It's a satire about Victorian society and frankly I'm too far removed from a lot of the issues to get much out of his turning them upside down. But the three chapters on machines-- Wow! When I read Dune in the 80s the idea of the "Butlerian Jihad" struck me as a particularly unusual new idea. I never would have believed that the plot of these chapters-- machines evolving through natural and artificial selection into a kind of artificial life, reproducin I admit I skimmed over a lot of this book. I never would have believed that the plot of these chapters-- machines evolving through natural and artificial selection into a kind of artificial life, reproducing with the aid of humans like flowers reproduce with the aid of bees, evolving into cyborgs and an alien intelligence far beyond our own but as incomprehensible to us as the thoughts of animals are to plants, and finally being destroyed by humans in order to preserve a place for themselves in the universe-- could have been conceived before , let alone ! Butler already understood that heredity was a form of mechanical information transfer: he called it "unconscious memory. None of his contemporaries understood him; they thought he was making some kind of "ad absurdum" attack on Darwin. View all 3 comments. I read this with the Evolution of SF group. It's our proto-SF read this month Oct It's a very quick sketch with very little characterization, but a lot of philosophy that should have been interesting or funny, but left me cold until almost the end. I kept feeling as if there was a joke in there some I read this with the Evolution of SF group. I kept feeling as if there was a joke in there somewhere, but I was just too stupid to see it. Maybe I am. Perhaps it was just indifference to the subject matter Musical banks with currency that's worthless? Monty Python puts me to sleep. Whatever, I found it either boring or too ludicrous to care about it. I managed to finish it which I doubted I would at chapter All told, I guess it was worth reading for the ideas in presented. Some have been used since, so it is definitely a foundational novel for SF. For that, I'm really tempted to give it 3 stars, but I didn't like it much, so it's only getting 2. This is not the correct edition. Those that weren't only did a chapter or two. Well worth listening to. I don't think I would have made it through the text. Shelves: victorians , dystopia , fiction. There are several reasons for this, the most important being the deeply annoying narrator. While he is almost certainly meant to be annoying, this fact in no way detracts from the overall annoyance. Seventy pages pass before he even gets to the mysterious lost civilisation of Erewhon, during which time the reader gets mighty tired of Victorian colonialist attitudes. Rapacious greed is complemented by ugly racism and patronising hypocrisy. Butler has no gift for plotting or characterisation, but some of his absurdist philosophisification is genuinely fascinating. And what consideration for the individual is tolerable unless society is the gainer thereby? Wherefore should a man be so richly rewarded for having been son to a millionaire, were it not clearly provable that the common welfare is thus better furthered? For property is robbery, but then, we are all robbers or would-be robbers together, and have found it essential our thieving, as we have found it necessary to organise our lust and our revenge. Conversely, here is an example of where I was more confident of parodic intent, yet Butler managed to prefigure current debates about mechanisation and AI in a manner that verges on uncanny: I would repeat that I fear none of the existing machines; what I fear is the extraordinary rapidity with which they are becoming something very different to what they are at present.