Erewhon
About this ebook
A utopian classic with a rich legacy–influencing authors from Huxley to Herbert and beyond–Erewhon satirizes Victorian society with biting insight still relevant today.
When Higgs, a young traveler, stumbles upon the beautiful land of Erewhon, he soon discovers that its seemingly ideal culture is founded upon bizarre, unsettling beliefs. Crime is a sickness, while sickness is a crime; the greatest scholarly achievement is unreason, and all machines have been eliminated for fear of artificial intelligence. In a society that suppresses originality, the traveler and his values are a threat. Torn between escape and Arowhena, the woman he has grown to love, Higgs must contend with Erewhon's strange ways–and with the challenges they pose to his own beliefs.
Engaging with the work of Charles Darwin and inspired by the author’s time in colonial New Zealand, Erewhon is a bright, irreverent, and enduring text about technology, religion, crime, and institutional rigidity. This new edition of the 1872 classic arrives in honor of its 150th anniversary, featuring a brilliant introduction contextualizing the book from one of New Zealand’s great academic thinkers in science fiction, Dr. Octavia Cade.
About the author
Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works, including the Utopian satire Erewhon and the posthumous novel The Way of All Flesh, his two best-known works. Butler also made prose translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey which remain in use to this day.
Octavia Cade is a New Zealand writer. She has a PhD in science communication and a particular interest in how science intersects with speculative fiction: examples of her work on this can be found in Horror Studies, MOSF Journal of Science Fiction, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, Supernatural Studies and various anthologies from academic presses. She has also sold over 60 short stories to markets including Clarkesworld, F&SF, and Strange Horizons. A novel, several novellas, two poetry collections, two short story collections, and a nonfiction collection have sold to various small presses. She is a four time Sir Julius Vogel Award winner and a Bram Stoker nominee. Octavia attended Clarion West 2016, and was the 2020 writer in residence at Massey University.
