A review by miztrebor
Erewhon by Samuel Butler

3.0

I wasn't sure what I was getting into when opening the book. I picked it up randomly one day a few years ago knowing I'd eventually read it. In ways I'm glad I did, in other ways I could have gone without it. There wasn't anything wrong with the story, aside from the last several chapters being accounts of histories of the culture the main character stumbled upon. With that said, the chapters on the machines really caught my attention. This book was published in 1872 and shows a prediction of "robots" or machines being the dominant "beings" on the planet at some future time. It also goes into how like organic organisms machinery can be. This is a unique view on the topic to me. I'm sure it's been brought up before; science fiction has much to say about the topic, but for this time period it awakened me to a new view on what people thought back then. There was also the discussion on whether or not meat/plants should be consumed. I found that quite funny due to the rise in vegetarianism in today's world. All in all, this book wasn't terrible. It's a bit slow because of it's age and how slowly I read older books due to difference in language. But it's not entirely a waste of time.