Erewhon

While on a journey, a traveler discovers a community in which machines are forbidden and the infirm are treated as criminals. Samuel Butler's Erewhon, or Over the Range was published anonymously 1872. In this satire of Victorian society, the main character Higgs discovers an unknown country, the seeming utopia called Erewhon, Nowhere backwards with the "h" and "w" transposed. The starting chapters detailing the discovery of Erewhon were based on Butler's experiences in New Zealand as a young man. Butler was possibly the first to write about the idea that machines might one day develop consciousness through the process of Darwinian Selection.

if The Reader Will Excuse Me I Will Say Nothing Of My Antecedents Nor Of The Circumstances Which Led Me To Leave My Native Country; The Narrative Would Be Tedious To Him And Painful To Myself. (excerpt)