Erewhon; Or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler

"Erewhon; Or, Over the Range" by Samuel Butler is a satirical novel published in 1872. A traveler discovers a strange fictional country where society operates by inverted rules: illness is treated as crime, while criminals receive medical treatment. The book satirizes Victorian England while pioneering speculations about machine consciousness and artificial intelligence in its famous "Book of the Machines" section. Drawing on Butler's experiences as a sheep farmer in New Zealand, this darkly comic work imagines a world where compassion and punishment are bizarrely reversed, and where machines may evolve beyond human control. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

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About this eBook

Author Butler, Samuel, 1835-1902
Title Erewhon; Or, Over the Range
Note Wikipedia page about this book: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon
Credits Produced by David Price
Reading Level Reading ease score: 55.0 (10th to 12th grade). Somewhat difficult to read.
Language English
LoC Class PR: Language and Literatures: English literature
Subject Satire
Subject Utopias -- Fiction
Subject Utopian fiction
Category Text
EBook-No. 1906
Release Date
Most Recently Updated Aug 5, 2025
Copyright Status Public domain in the USA.
Downloads 1884 downloads in the last 30 days.
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