Erewhon by Samuel Butler is one of the most unusual and forward-looking novels of the nineteenth century. Published anonymously in 1872, it presents itself as a travel narrative about a man who ventures into a remote mountain region and discovers a hidden society. Yet the book is less an adventure story than a bold satire of Victorian norms, religion, criminal justice, and—most famously—the relationship between humans and machines. Its ideas remain strikingly modern.
The narrator enters Erewhon expecting a primitive land, but what he finds is a culture governed by rules that invert conventional logic. Illness is treated as a crime, while fraud and wrongdoing are viewed as diseases requiring sympathy rather than punishment. People confess their moral transgressions to professional “straighteners,” who serve as a combination of philosopher and therapist. Even the economy and education system function according to principles that seem absurd on the surface, until the reader recognises the parallels to their own society.
One of the most discussed sections of the book is Butler’s argument that machines might evolve through a process similar to natural selection. Written just a decade after Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, these chapters propose that technology could develop an intelligence and agency of its own—an idea remarkably prescient for an age before electricity was widespread. Today, in an era of artificial intelligence, automation, and accelerating machine learning, Butler’s warnings feel more relevant than ever.
Beyond its themes, Erewhon is also a sharp literary experiment. Butler mixes parody, philosophy, social criticism, and speculative fiction, creating a genre-defying work that has influenced writers from George Orwell to Aldous Huxley. Its tone alternates between playful and severe, forcing the reader to stay alert to the layers beneath the narrative.
For contemporary readers, Erewhon is valuable both as a document of its time and as a lens through which to view present debates about progress, morality, and technology. It challenges assumptions, mocks certainty, and invites reflection on how societies construct their “common sense.” More than 150 years after its publication, the book still feels like a mirror held up to modern life—distorted, humorous, and unexpectedly accurate. Download the Public Domain book here:
