Editing Erewhon

{{Short description|1872 utopian novel by Samuel Butler}}
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{{Infobox book
|name                 = Erewhon
|title_orig           = 
|translator           = 
|image                = Erewhon Cover.jpg
|image_size           = 
|caption              = First edition cover
|author               = [[Samuel Butler (novelist)|Samuel Butler]]
|illustrator          = 
|cover_artist         = 
|country              = United Kingdom
|language             = English 
|series               = 
|genre                = [[Utopian fiction]], [[Satire]], [[Science fiction]]<ref>Canavan, Gerry (2018). ''The Cambridge History of Science Fiction''. Cambridge University Press. pp. 57, 76–77. {{ISBN|978-1-31-669437-4}}</ref>
|publisher            = [[Nicholas Trübner|Trübner]] and [[John Ballantyne (publisher)|Ballantyne]]
|release_date         = 1872
|english_release_date = 
|congress = PR4349.B7 E7 1872 c. 1
|media_type           = 
|pages                = 246 
|isbn                 = 
|oclc = 2735354
|dewey = 823.8
|preceded_by          = 
|followed_by          = [[Erewhon Revisited]]
|external_url         = https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/samuel-butler/erewhon
}}

[[File:Erewhon.map.jpg|thumb|right|400px|Map of part of New Zealand to illustrate ''Erewhon'' and ''[[Erewhon Revisited]]'']]
'''''Erewhon: or, Over the Range''''' ({{IPAc-en|ɛ|r|ɛ|ʍ|ɒ|n}}<ref>The title is an anagram of the word "nowhere." In the preface to the first edition of his book, Butler specified that "The Author wishes it to be understood that Erewhon is pronounced as a word of three syllables, all short—thus, Ĕ-rĕ-whŏn." Nevertheless, the word is occasionally pronounced with two syllables as "air-hwun" or "air-one".</ref>) is a [[utopian novel]] by English writer [[Samuel Butler (novelist)|Samuel Butler]], first published in 1872,<ref>{{Cite book |year=1872 |title= Erewhon, or Over the Range |publisher=Trubner & Co. |place=London |edition= 1st |url=https://archive.org/stream/ErewhonOverrang00Butl#page/ii/mode/2up  |access-date=5 March 2016 |via= Internet Archive}}</ref> set in a [[fictional country]] discovered and explored by the protagonist. The book is a satire on [[Victorian morality|Victorian]] society.<ref>George Orwell, ''Erewhon'', BBC Home Service, Talks for Schools, 8 June 1945</ref>

The first few chapters of the novel dealing with the discovery of Erewhon are based on Butler's own experiences in [[New Zealand]], where, as a young man, he worked as a [[sheep station|sheep farmer]] on [[Mesopotamia Station]] for four years (1860–1864), exploring parts of the interior of the [[South Island]] and writing about it in ''A First Year in Canterbury Settlement'' (1863).

The novel is one of the first to explore ideas of [[Artificial intelligence in fiction|artificial intelligence]], as influenced by [[Charles Darwin|Darwin's]] recently published ''[[On the Origin of Species]]'' (1859) and the machines developed out of the [[Industrial Revolution]] (late 18th to early 19th centuries). Specifically, it concerns itself, in the three-chapter "Book of the Machines", with the potentially dangerous ideas of [[Artificial consciousness|machine consciousness]] and [[Self-replicating machines in fiction|self-replicating machines]].

In Erewhon, illness is crime and crime is illness. As a result, citizens are imprisoned for offenses like physical ailments, misfortune, or ugliness while those who commit conventional crimes like fraud or theft are seen more sympathetically as exhibiting symptoms of moral afflictions and prescribed sessions with a "straightener" (essentially a psychologist) for treatment.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Erewhon Summary |url=https://www.supersummary.com/erewhon/summary/ |access-date=2025-04-11 |website=SuperSummary |language=en}}</ref> The lack of compassion for physical sickness is reflected in the role of physicians in Erewhonian society, which is described as something more akin to that of a judge or law enforcement officer than that of a doctor. This system of law and medicine is a satirical inversion of the pattern in western society where crimes are punished and physical illnesses are treated—immorality is a matter of luck beyond one's control while sickness falls into the purview of one's individual autonomy.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Sanibel |date=2024-03-21 |title=Erewhon: or, The Worst Possible Name for a Grocery Store |url=https://lithub.com/erewhon-or-the-worst-possible-name-for-a-grocery-store/ |access-date=2025-04-11 |website=Literary Hub |language=en-US}}</ref>

==Content==
The greater part of the book consists of a description of Erewhon. 
===The Book of the Machines===
Butler developed the three chapters of ''Erewhon'' that make up "The Book of the Machines" from a number of articles he had contributed to ''[[The Press]]'', which had just begun publication in [[Christchurch]], New Zealand, beginning with "[[Darwin among the Machines]]" (1863). Butler was the first to write about the possibility that [[Artificial consciousness|machines might develop consciousness]] by [[natural selection]].<ref>[https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6173 "Darwin among the Machines"], reprinted in the Notebooks of Samuel Butler at [[Project Gutenberg]]</ref>

In his preface to the second edition Butler wrote, "I regret that reviewers have in some cases been inclined to treat the chapters on Machines as an attempt to reduce Mr Darwin's theory to an absurdity. Nothing could be further from my intention, and few things would be more distasteful to me than any attempt to laugh at Mr Darwin."

===Characters===
* Higgs—The narrator who informs the reader of the nature of Erewhonian society.
* Chowbok (Kahabuka)—Higgs' guide into the mountains; he is a native who greatly fears the Erewhonians. He eventually abandons Higgs.
* Yram—The daughter of Higgs' jailer who takes care of him when he first enters Erewhon. Her name is Mary spelled backwards.
* Senoj Nosnibor—Higgs' host after he is released from prison; he hopes that Higgs will marry his elder daughter. His name is Robinson Jones backwards.
* Zulora—Senoj Nosnibor's elder daughter—Higgs finds her unpleasant, but her father hopes Higgs will marry her.
* Arowhena—Senoj Nosnibor's younger daughter; she falls in love with Higgs and runs away with him.
* Mahaina—A woman who claims to suffer from [[alcoholism]] but is believed to have a weak temperament.
* Ydgrun—The incomprehensible goddess of the Erewhonians. Her name is an anagram of Grundy (from [[Mrs. Grundy]], a character in [[Thomas Morton (playwright)|Thomas Morton]]'s play ''[[Speed the Plough]]'').

==Reception==
In 1873, the reviewer in the [[Dunedin]] newspaper the ''[[Otago Witness]]'' declared that ''Erewhon'' was the best English satirical fiction since ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'' (1726).<ref>{{cite journal |title=Review |journal=Otago Witness |date=10 May 1873 |page=28 |url=https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/OW18730510.2.46}}</ref>

In a 1945 broadcast, [[George Orwell]] praised the book and said that when Butler wrote ''Erewhon'' it needed "imagination of a very high order to see that machinery could be dangerous as well as useful". He recommended the novel, though not its sequel, ''[[Erewhon Revisited]]''.<ref>Orwell, ''Collected Works'', "I Belong to the Left", pp. 172–173.</ref>

==Influence and legacy==
===Deleuze and Guattari===
The French philosopher [[Gilles Deleuze]] used ideas from Butler's book at various points in the development of his philosophy of difference. In ''[[Difference and Repetition]]'' (1968), Deleuze refers to what he calls "Ideas" as "Erewhon". "Ideas are not concepts", he said, they are "a form of eternally positive differential [[Multiplicity (philosophy)|multiplicity]], distinguished from the identity of concepts."<ref>Deleuze (1968, p. 288).</ref> "Erewhon" refers to the "nomadic distributions" that pertain to [[Simulacrum|simulacra]], which "are not [[Universal (metaphysics)|universals]] like the [[Category (Kant)|categories]], nor are they the ''hic et nunc'' or ''nowhere'', the diversity to which categories apply in representation."<ref>Deleuze (1968, p. 285).</ref> "Erewhon", in this reading, is "not only a disguised ''no-where'' but a rearranged ''now-here''."<ref>Deleuze (1968, p. 333, n.7).</ref>

In his collaboration with [[Félix Guattari]], ''[[Anti-Oedipus]]'' (1972), Deleuze draws on Butler's "The Book of the Machines" to "go beyond" the "usual polemic between [[vitalism]] and [[Mechanism (philosophy)|mechanism]]" as it relates to their concept of "[[Desiring-production|desiring-machines]]":<ref>Deleuze and Guattari (1972, pp. 312–314).</ref>
{{blockquote|For one thing, Butler is not content to say that machines extend the [[organism]], but asserts that they are really limbs and organs lying on the [[body without organs]] of a society, which men will appropriate according to their power and their wealth, and whose poverty deprives them as if they were mutilated organisms. For another, he is not content to say that organisms are machines, but asserts that they contain such an abundance of parts that they must be compared to very different parts of distinct machines, each relating to the others, engendered in combination with the others ... He shatters the vitalist argument by calling in question the specific or personal unity of the organism, and the mechanist argument even more decisively, by calling in question the structural unity of the machine.|[[Gilles Deleuze|Deleuze]] and [[Félix Guattari|Guattari]]|''[[Anti-Œdipus]]''}}

===Companies===
[[Erewhon Market]] is the name of an upscale Los Angeles-based natural foods grocery chain originally founded in Boston in 1966.<ref>{{cite web|title=History of Erewhon – Natural Foods Pioneer in the United States (1966-2011)|url=http://www.soyinfocenter.com/pdf/Erewhon.pdf|website=Soy Info Center|access-date=21 December 2019}}</ref> The store’s co-founder Aveline Yokoyama named it after Erewhon because it was the favorite book of her mentor, George Ohsawa.<ref>{{cite web|title=Erewhon’s Secret|website=The Cut|date=6 November 2023|publisher=Vox Media, LLC|author-last1=Howley|author-first1=Kerry|url=https://www.thecut.com/article/erewhon-smoothie-boston-los-angeles-history.html}}</ref>

Erewhon is also the name of an independent speculative fiction publishing company<ref>{{cite web| url = https://www.erewhonbooks.com| title = Erewhon Books}}</ref> founded in 2018 by [[Liz Gorinsky]].<ref>{{cite web|title=New Science Fiction and Fantasy Publisher Founded by Former Tor Books Editor|url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/liz-gorinsky-founds-erewhon-books-1153139|website=The Hollywood Reporter|date=17 October 2018|access-date=17 October 2018|author-first1=Graeme|author-last1=McMillan}}</ref>

===Other references===
{{more references|date=April 2025}}
[[Agatha Christie]] references ''Erewhon'' in her novel ''[[Death on the Nile]]'' (1937).

A copy of ''Erewhon'' figures in [[Elizabeth Bowen]]'s short story "The Cat Jumps" (1934).

[[Karl Popper]]'s book ''[[The Open Society and Its Enemies]]'' (1945), includes an epigraph from ''Erewhon'' that reads, "It will be seen ... that the Erewhonians are a meek and long-suffering people easily led by the nose, and quick to offer up common sense at the shrine of logic, when a philosopher arises among them who carries them away ... by convincing them that their existing institutions are not based on the strictest principles of morality."<ref>Karl Raimund Popper, ''The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Spell of Plato. Vol. 1'', (Princeton University Press) 1971.</ref>

[[Alan M. Turing]] references ''Erewhon'' in his posthumously published paper, "Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory" (c. 1951). He writes, "At some stage therefore we should have to expect the machines to take control, in the way that is mentioned in Samuel Butler's Erewhon."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Turing |first1=Sara |title=Alan M. Turing: Centenary Edition |date=2012 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1107020580 |pages=157 }}</ref>

[[Aldous Huxley]] alludes to ''Erewhon'' in his novels ''The Doors of Perception'' (1954) and ''Island'' (1962).

In his book, ''A Testament'' (1957), [[Frank Lloyd Wright]] mistakenly attributes the origin of the term [[Usonia]] as an alternate name for the [[United States of America]] to Samuel Butler in ''Erewhon''.

The "[[Butlerian Jihad]]" is the name of the crusade to wipe out "thinking machines" in the [[Frank Herbert]]'s novel, ''[[Dune (novel)|Dune]]'' (1965).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://spartanideas.msu.edu/2016/03/29/8624/|title = The Butlerian Jihad and Darwin among the Machines| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210805185224/http://spartanideas.msu.edu/2016/03/29/8624/ | archive-date=5 August 2021 }}</ref>

[[C. S. Lewis]] alludes to ''Erewhon'' in his essay, "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment."<ref>C. S. Lewis, Walter Hooper, ed. ''God in the Dock; Essays on Theology and Ethics,'' (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans) 1970. Also: C. S. Lewis, "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment," ''Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy'' Vol. 13: No. 1, Article 11. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/irp/vol13/iss1/11</ref>

The movie ''[[The Day of the Dolphin]]'' (1973) features a boat named the Erewhon.{{fact|date=June 2024}}

"Erewhon" is the unofficial name US astronauts give Regan Station, a military space station in [[David Brin|David Brin's]] novel ''[[Earth (Brin novel)|Earth]]'' (1990).<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.davidbrin.com/fiction/earth2.html|title=DAVID BRIN: Earth}}</ref>

In 1994, a group of ex-[[Yugoslavia]]n writers in [[Amsterdam]], who had established the [[International PEN|PEN centre of Yugoslav Writers in Exile]], published a single issue of the literary journal ''Erewhon''.<ref>''[http://www.biblio.com/slobodan-et-al-blagojevic/erewhon~1189370~title Erewhon]''; Blagojevic, Slobodan, et al.</ref>

In the graphic novel ''[[Bye Bye, Earth]]'' (2000), Belle's sword is called "Erehwon", and the story makes reference to the novel ''Erewhon''.

New Zealand sound art organization, the Audio Foundation, published in 2012 an anthology edited by [[Bruce Russell (musician)|Bruce Russell]] named ''Erewhon Calling'' after Butler's novel.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Hayes|first1=Craig|title=Crooked Sounds from Aotearoa 'Erewhon Calling: Experimental Sound in New Zealand|url=https://www.popmatters.com/163769-erewhon-calling-experimental-sound-in-new-zealand-bruce-russell-edit-2495811032.html|publisher=PopMatters|date=8 October 2012|access-date=5 December 2017}}</ref>

In 2014, [[New Zealand]] artist [[Gavin Hipkins]] released his first feature film, titled ''Erewhon'' and based on Butler's book. It premiered at the [[New Zealand International Film Festival]] and the [[Edinburgh Art Festival]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Review of 'Erewhon'|url=http://www.circuit.org.nz/blog/circuit-cast-episode-14-gavin-hipkins-kim-paton-spark-festival|website=CIRCUIT|date=19 September 2014|access-date=12 June 2016}}</ref>

In "[[Smile (Doctor Who)|Smile]]", the second episode of the 2017 season of ''[[Doctor Who]]'', the Doctor and Bill explore a spaceship named ''Erehwon''. Despite the slightly different spelling, the episode writer [[Frank Cottrell-Boyce]] confirmed<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://twitter.com/frankcottrell_b/status/855857616358166528|title=Frank Cottrell-Boyce on Twitter|via=Twitter|access-date=2017-05-21}}</ref> that this was a reference to Butler's novel.

In the 2019 [[Ubisoft]] video game ''[[Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint]]'', "Erewhon" is the name for the world's settler hideout and players' online hub.<ref>{{Citation |title=Introducing AI Teammates to Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint | date=11 July 2020 | url=https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/ghost-recon/breakpoint/news-updates/16vTuHm2gwgvwpWFpzawuE/introducing-ai-teammates-to-tom-clancys-ghost-recon-breakpoint | access-date=2025-01-21}}</ref>

A copy of Erewhon figures prominently in the video for "A Barely Lit Path," the lead single from [[Oneohtrix Point Never]]'s 2023 album ''Again.''<ref>{{Citation |title=Oneohtrix Point Never – A Barely Lit Path | date=29 August 2023 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kyFqe36BqM |access-date=2023-08-29}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Rangitata River]] – the location of the Erewhon sheep station named by Butler who was the first white settler in the area and lived at the Mesopotamia Sheep Station
* [[Nacirema]] – another piece of satirical writing with a similar backwards pun

==References==
{{Reflist}}
* "Mesopotamia Station", Newton, P. (1960)
*{{cite book
 |last       = Acland
 |first      = Leopold George Dyke
 |title      = The Early Canterbury Runs: Containing the First, Second and Third (new) Series
 |year       = 1946
 |publisher  = Whitcombe and Tombs Limited
 |location   = Christchurch
 |url        = https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-AclEarl-t1-body-d6-d5.html
}}
* "Samuel Butler of Mesopotamia", Maling, P. B. (1960)
* "The Cradle of Erewhon", Jones, J. (1959)

==External links==
{{Wikisource|Erewhon}}
* {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/samuel-butler/erewhon}}
* {{Gutenberg|1906|Erewhon}}
* [https://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-ButFir-t1-g1-t1-g1-t4-body.html "Darwin Among the Machines" (To the Editor of ''The Press'', Christchurch, New Zealand, 13 June 1863)] from the [[New Zealand Electronic Text Centre]]
* {{librivox book | title=Erewhon | author=Samuel BUTLER}}

{{Samuel Butler}}
{{Deleuze-Guattari}}
{{Authority control}}
[[Category:1872 British novels]]
[[Category:1872 science fiction novels]]
[[Category:1872 fantasy novels]]
[[Category:British science fiction novels]]
[[Category:British fantasy novels]]
[[Category:British satirical novels]]
[[Category:Science fantasy novels]]
[[Category:English novels]]
[[Category:Utopian novels]]
[[Category:Lost world novels]]
[[Category:Victorian novels]]
[[Category:Social science fiction]]
[[Category:Technology in society]]
[[Category:Fictional European countries]]
[[Category:Novels set in New Zealand]]
[[Category:Novels set in fictional countries]]
[[Category:Novels about technology]]
[[Category:Novels about artificial intelligence]]
[[Category:British novels adapted into films]]
[[Category:Science fiction novels adapted into films]]
[[Category:Fantasy novels adapted into films]]
[[Category:Works published anonymously]]
[[Category:Novels by Samuel Butler (novelist)]]