About this title: Samuel Butler claims to have spent 10 years writing his first novel, which emerged as a masterpiece of social and religious satire. The delay was partly due to the fact that it was composed on Sundays while the rest of Butler's weeks were devoted to what he felt at the time was his true calling: painting. Borrowing the landscape of New Zealand and adopting ideas from articles Butler had written for magazines in response to Darwin's evolutionary theories, Butler created the strange race of Erewhonians who have forbidden the use of machines, who treat their sick like criminals and their ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Minotauro
Date Published: 08/2004
ISBN-13:9788445074749ISBN:8445074741
Description: Fine in fine dust jacket. Like New, Unread, not previously owned. May show signs of wear including remainder marks or stickers on book or cover., In like new dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Magnum Books
Date Published: 1968
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Nice soft cover, lightly read, shelf wear to cover, light creases on spine, light aging, bends on bottom corner of front cover, stk #2391L7. 348 p. read more
Description: Fair. B00005VTBF 1940 hardcover. Owner's name is on flyleaf & some pages are foxed. Dust jacket & cover are worn, torn, soiled. 4.25" x 1.5" piece missing from back cover. Your book will be carefully protected for transit in sturdy, weather-resistant packaging. We are prompt, efficient, communicative. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Magnum Easy Eye Books
Date Published: 1968
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Larger Type Edition. 348 tanned pgs in gd condition; cover has some wear on edges and age spotting. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Magnum Books
Date Published: 1968
Description: Good. No Jacket. Markings On First Page, Spine Creased, Covers Soiled/Water Spots Not Affecting Interior, Partial Sticker Front Cover, Text Is Unmarked, Good Reading Copy. read more
Binding: Perfect Bound Paper
Publisher: Magnum
Date Published: 1968
Description: Good + to Very Good- Mass Market Paperback. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. Light wear, age yellowing, some water stains to top and front foredges. (Store Display-Classics) read more
Binding: very Good
Publisher: Lancer Books, Inc, NY
Date Published: 1968
Description: Good. No Jacket. Paperback Crease line to front cover, two nicks to side front edge, edgewear to top back cover and hinges, brown spotting to covers, inside covers and first/last pages. Larger type for easy reading. Complete and unabridged. "There is a land where illness, ugliness and bad luck are punishable crimes, whereas thieves and murderers receive compassionate medical attention; where boys are taught the impractical in a College of Unreason; where unusable wealth is stored in Musical ... read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Magnum Easy Eye Books
Date Published: 1968
Description: Very Good. Ugliness and bad luck are punishable crimes. Thieves and murderers receive compensated medical attention. The land of Ereshon. Light wear. Large Type. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Magnum Books, New York
Description: Good- 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. 348pp. 13-445. c1968. Publication date unknown. Magnum Easy Eye Book. Covs rubbed, creased; edges & corners worn. Slight sp lean, "BU" inked near bottom sp; sp creased; edges & ends worn. Erewhon, anagram for Nowhere, begins as an adventure story. A young sheep farmer strikes out across unexplored mountains in a colony much like New Zealand. The way is hard, the suspense gripping. He is then captured by the Erewhonians--and we are suddenly in an equally adventurous ... read more
Edition: large print
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Magnum
Description: Reading Copy or Better (a more c. Mass Market Paperback: Magnum: 13-445: large print: Reading Copy or Better (a more complete description will be provided upon request): Cover Artist: None Credited. read more
"Pardon me, but the English geek inside me is coming out. Remember as Dave Barry said, if you can easily come up with idiot interpretations of novels, you should major in English. I majored in journalism, meaning I could easily come up with idiot interpretations of news events. Same thing.
So here's my idiot interpretation of Samuel Butler's contribution to Frank Herbert's Dune.
Herbert, author of the Dune novels, may have taken the name of Butler and the idea of a societal rebellion against machines from Butler's novel Erewhon into Herbert's books as the Butlerian Jihad, in which sentient robots and thinking machines were banned, with the ensuing chaos and violence that the word jihad implies. This is certainly not an original thought, as many Dune enthusiasts (I hesitate to call them scholars, since there are no endowed chairs, at least that I know of, for the pupose of literary study of the Herbert canon, though it would not surprise me at all to find someone, several someones, who have focused on Herbert in masters or doctoral theses. I'll bet Comic Book Guy would have a few words to say on the subject.) have also come to the same conclusion. There's a lot of disagreement, however, most of it superficial, such as this.
I believe there is strong evidence that supports Herbert's drawing on Butler's name and Erewhonian philosophy as background for the Butlerian Jihad.
Butler's Erewhonians believed that an overreliance on machines would weaken humanity and cause natural selection to stumble in allowing weaker humans, aided by machines, to continue contributing to the gene pool. This belief is in line with the criminalization of illness in Erewhon, where diseases of the body were treated as crimes and justly punished, while what we consider to be crimes - embezzlement, tax evasion - are tolerated under Erewhonian law as proof that the minds that performed such activities are stronger than those that do not, pushing the drive to succeed by any means above the drive to succeed honestly.
In addition, Butler's Erewhonian scholar writes:
The misery is that man has been blind so long already. In his reliance upon the use of steam, he has been betrayed into increasing and multiplying. To withdraw steam power suddenly will not have the effect of reducing us to the state in which we were before its introduction; there will be a general break-up and time of anarchy such as has never been known; it will be as though our population were suddenly doubled, with no additional means of feeding the increased number. The air we breathe is hardly more necessary for our animal life than the use of any machine, on the strength of which we have increased our numbers, is to our civilization; it is the machines which act upon man and make him man, as much as man who has acted upon and made the machines; but we must choose between the alternative of undergoing much present suffering, or seeing ourselves gradually superseded by our own creatures till we rank no higher in comparison with them, than the beasts of the field with ourselves.
Here we see the roots of and consequences of Herbert's Butlerian Jihad. Erewhonians feared overreliance on steam. Herbert's empire-dwellers feared the overreliance on thinking machines. Despite the fact that withdrawing the steam/thinking machines all at once would introduce a period of anarchy, both the Erewhonians and Herbert's people chose war, rather than continue to become subject to the machines they created. Both there Erewhonians and Herbert's people prepared alternatives - Erewhonians relied solely on men, judged by horse-power, to accomplish the work of the steam-engines; Herbert's people used the mentats. But both in Erewhon and in the Empire, overreliance on machine became overreliance on the "machine" built to replace the machine, leading to the same general conditions the rejection of machinery and the jihad were meant to overcome.
Not until mélange is made synthetically - and never in Erewhon - is the paradigm shifted enough to bring about another revolution."
"This was my walkin' around reading for awhile. My impression? First, I think Butler should have written more tales of adventure -- this book starts out strong, builds your interest, and then slips into heavy satire (not up to the Dean, though). I enjoyed Erewhon, but it's pretty dated in its satire (unless you are intimate with Victorian socio-eco-religio-politico situations)."
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