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The first few chapters of the novel, dealing with the discovery of Erewhon, are in fact based on Butler's own experiences in New Zealand , where as a young man he was a Sheep Farmer for about four years ( 1860 - 1864 ) and where he explored parts of the interior of the South Island . (One of the country's largest sheep farms, located near where Butler lived, is named Erewhon in his honour. It is near Mesopotamia Station , a large sheep farm.) CONTENT The greater part of the book consists of a description of Erewhon. The nature of this nation is intended to be ambiguous. At first glance Erewhon appears to be a Utopia , yet it soon becomes clear that this is far from the case. Yet for all the failings of Erewhon it is also clearly not a Dystopia (or anti-utopia), an undesirable society such as that depicted by George Orwell 's '' Nineteen Eighty-Four ''. As a satirical utopia ''Erewhon'' has sometimes been compared to '' Gulliver's Travels '' (1726) by Jonathan Swift , the image of Utopia in this latter case also bearing strong parallels with the self-view of the British Empire at the time. ''Erewhon'' satirizes various aspects of Victorian society, including criminal punishment, 's evolution theory; Butler had read '' The Origin Of Species '' soon after it was published in 1859 . The Book of Machines The three chapters of ''Erewhon'' that make up "The Book of the Machines" were developed from a number of articles that Butler had contributed to a local periodical while in New Zealand. Butler was the first to write about the possibility that machines develop consciousness. To him it was a joke, but today scientists and philosophers are seriously debating whether computers and robots could develop the same kind of intelligence ( Artificial Intelligence , AI) and consciousness ( Artificial Life ) as human beings. It is also a popular theme in science-fiction novels and movies; some raise the same question ( Dune 's Butlerian Jihad , for example), while others wonder what the relationship between human beings and machines with artificial intelligence would be and whether AI is desirable at all. The rest of the book Erewhon has many more curious aspects, such as the notion that children choose their parents. His "Musical Banks" chapter is an attack on religious hypocrisy. Banks of that era were few and quite magnificent, but the satire does not end with their comparison to cathedrals in these characteristics. In that chapter, he mentions that these banks have their own currency, which is not honored by the ''other'' banks. This refers to a forgotten practice. During the age when the whole point of money was that it was made of precious metal, there was frequent trimming or shaving of coins once they were released to the public, even though people were expected to accept the diminished coins at their face value. These bits were sold under the counter to an assayer. There was also widespread counterfeiting. It would not do for churches to be implicated in these activities. Thus, churches actually had money-changing tables at which each coin would be examined separately and a ''token'' of actual worth given to the layperson so that he or she could be seen by the other parishoners as putting money in the basket during that part of the service. These tokens had religious images upon them; this also prevented pilferage. The money-changing was not done at the same time as the service itself. (Some distinguished Protestant churches in the US had this practice in the 19th Century , besides the Church Of England and the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.) The practice goes back to the days of temple of Jerusalem , but then it was done for the different reason — that money offered to the temple did not have the images of pagan gods on it. Characters
RECEPTION At its first release, this book sold far better than any of Butler's other works — perhaps because the British public assumed that the anonymous author was some better-known figure (the favorite being Lord Lytton, who had published ''The Coming Race'' two years prior). In 1901 Butler published a sequel, ''Erewhon Revisited,'' alongside a revised and expanded edition of ''Erewhon.'' OTHER Erewhon Prison is the not-officially recognised prison in the 1997 film Face/Off. EXTERNAL LINKS
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