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Our Proto SF (pre 1920) read this month is Erewhon by Samuel Butler. This book can be downloaded for free from Gutenberg.org in multiple ebook formats or read online here:


It is also available as an audiobook, either download it or listen through your browser, from Librivox here:

I'm in for this one.

Me, too. I've already read Erewhon Revisited, so I'm ready for this one.

My dilemma, though, is whether I should read it from back to front or front to back.

I've started reading this, the Librivox edition. The narrator is pretty good. The story isn't very interesting yet, but I just started the 5th chapter.

Did anyone else feel a similarity between Chowbock & Chewbacca when he was making faces?

Does anyone know the correct translations for the Latin phrases? Google Translate:

O fortunatos nimium sua si bona nôrint agricolas
Oh, if they but knew too much good luck: the farmers,

O infortunatos nimium sua si mala nôrint
Oh, unfortunate, if the evils of their own too much vntrueth

I'm not sure what vntrueth is except perhaps untruth or lie that lead to bad luck?

The full paragraph is:
When we had done supper it was quite dark. The silence and freshness of the night, the occasional sharp cry of the wood-hen, the ruddy glow of the fire, the subdued rushing of the river, the sombre forest, and the immediate foreground of our saddles packs and blankets, made a picture worthy of a Salvator Rosa or a Nicolas Poussin. I call it to mind and delight in it now, but I did not notice it at the time. We next to never know when we are well off: but this cuts two ways,—for if we did, we should perhaps now better when we are ill off also; and I have sometimes thought that there are as many ignorant of the one as of the other. He who wrote, “O fortunatos nimium sua si bona nôrint agricolas,�� might have written quite as truly, “O infortunatos nimium sua si mala nôrint��; and there are few of us who are not protected from
the keenest pain by our inability to see what it is that we have done, what we are suffering, and what we truly are. Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.

I looked up Salvator Rosa, an Italian painter I'd never heard of before. The Wikipedia page has a decent bio & some pics, but Google images brought up some great paintings & sketches. Some make me wonder if Frank Frazetta didn't emulate him.


I'm not quite as fond of Nicolas Poussin works, but they're not bad, either. I like his landscapes better than his people.

There is a better translation on the wiki page for this phrase, which is the motto of the Maryland State Agricultural Society.



"The farmers would count themselves lucky, if they only knew how good they had it."

British people of that time sure did love to quote the Latin and Greek they were forced to learn in school.

The other phrase simply substitutes "evil" for "good" and "unlucky" for "lucky" and leaves out the farmers.

Thanks, Ed.

No egap renrut, this one.

About 25% in on the original book, I just discovered a dutch translation from 1873 (!) on the internet. I think I'll switch to that one.

Leo wrote: "No egap renrut, this one."

What?

I'm on chapter 12 now. Odd civilization that I guess is supposed to be satirical. I'm not finding any humor or sense in it even with the explanations. It's just ludicrous.

Jim wrote: "Leo wrote: "No egap renrut, this one."

What?"

Think backwards, like an Erwhonian.

Ah. OK. No, it isn't doing much for me, either.

It's hard to get through this book. The idea of being punished for illness I find interesting though. Since we now know a lot more where diseases come from, we have our own responsability to stay healthy. So, no smoking or drinking, not eating too much hamburgers, wear your mouth mask. In a lot of countries there is the economical punishment of high medical costs you have to pay for yourself. There are penalties for not wearing a mouth mask or being too close together. So in a way there we arrived at Erewhon.

He has more to say about medicine in the sequel: "... the horrors of the inquisition in the middle ages are nothing to what he depicted as certain to ensue if medical men were ever to have much money at their command."

The belief about babies bothering couples until they can be born is kind of funny, but that's about all. I keep feeling like his points are going over my head because I just don't find the philosophy compelling or funny. I'm also finding his insistence on Christianity making more sense ridiculous.

It will still be a little while until I get to this. But here are some thoughts from book 2 which I already read.

It has lots of funny ideas. A skilled comedian could make a good stand-up routine from them. But Butler writes in such a boring way that you aren't going to laugh out loud very often.

Most of the jokes are about turning a piece of conventional wisdom backwards. Some examples....

"...honesty does not consist in never stealing, but in knowing how and where it will be safe to do so."

He considers the (apocryphal) story of George Washington as a child cutting down a cherry tree and then when asked by his father about it says "I cannot tell a lie." The Erewhonians consider that the father was negligent in not teaching his child to lie. If a child does not know how to lie, he or she should be sent to a de-formatory because "... how can you expect your child to learn those petty arts of deception without which she must fall an easy prey to any one who wishes to deceive her? How can she detect lying in other people unless she has had some experience of it in her own practice? How, again, can she learn when it will be well for her to lie, and when to refrain from doing so, unless she has made many a mistake on a small scale while at an age when mistakes do not greatly matter?"

They believe that Yram must have misheard the religious saying, and that it really should be ‘Forgive us our trespasses, but do not forgive them that trespass against us.�� In the original version "... as we forgive them that trespass against us" would mean that we would not really be forgiven because we aren't very good at forgiving others.

"He had earned a high reputation for sobriety of judgement by resolutely refusing to have definite views on any subject."

"it is obviously better to aim at imperfection than perfection; for if we aim steadily at imperfection, we shall probably get it within a reasonable time, whereas to the end of our days we should never reach perfection."

“He said, ‘Cursed be they that say, “Thou shalt not serve God and Mammon, for it is the whole duty of man to know how to adjust the conflicting claims of these two deities.”’��

"It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence."

Jim, if you don't like the way he pokes fun at some parts of Christianity, you certainly wouldn't like book 2! That is kind of the main point of book 2. I like it (just barely). Criticizing Christianity in his day and age would be dangerous to do more openly, so he does it as satire. And, like I said, I find the ideas funny, but his delivery of the jokes not very funny.

Ed wrote: "It has lots of funny ideas. A skilled comedian could make a good stand-up routine from them. But Butler writes in such a boring way that you aren't going to laugh out loud very often. ..."
I agree. I had to laugh with the babies, once born, adults start a screaming session at them just to make very clear what an unwise idea it was to be born. And really Monty Python level: the musical banks. People singing in the bank. No idea why. And people collecting some cash money, but not even checking how much they are given, just a hand full of coins. Some of the coins being of a poor quality that they can bend, well, it's hilarious. Or could be if told by the right person.

Maybe it's the delivery that's lacking. I agree that some of the ideas are fun, but my initial chuckle is drowned in what follows. I certainly don't mind poking fun at Christianity, I think it's ludicrous, but it makes me not like the main character & that detracts from the story.

I agree with Leo in not getting the singing bank at all. That's a perfect example of the humor going over my head. There should be something funny about it, but it just seems ludicrous.

I finished it, but didn't like it, so only gave it 2 stars. Still, it really picked up with chapter 23. I was floored by how modern some of the ideas were. I mention them in my review here:
/review/show...

The musical banks might be a parody of religion. Elaborate buildings that people go to to feel good and sing music but that give out information (coins) that may not really be useful.

I also can't give it more than 2 stars. I did like the absurd humour, and also some of the ideas, like the fear of machines silently evolving into robots (I guess) and taking over. But the explaining parts I thought were far too long and boring. And there really wasn't a story or persons to identify with. I guess that was not what was intended with the book, but it would have helped me.

Ed wrote: "The musical banks might be a parody of religion. Elaborate buildings that people go to to feel good and sing music but that give out information (coins) that may not really be useful."
That is smart thinking, I missed that. Could be true, as no one could explain the real use of the musical banks, while everybody did insist on them to be maintained.

Last night I watched the episode on Erewhon in Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature. This is one of the "Great Courses" and is available at my library via Kanopy.

Professor Bedore also suggests that the musical banks are a satire of religion. Some other interesting info: Butler lived as a sheep herder in New Zealand while writing this. When he first tried to publish it, it was rejected. Half a year later, it was eagerly published by one of the companies that first rejected it. Why? In the meantime Looking Backward: 2000-1887 had become popular. Oops, I meant The Coming Race.

The section about machines was originally published separately as a newspaper article. He included it with few changes in the novel.

I'd like to watch more episodes of that lecture series. (Audio would be fine. There are no visuals in the lecture.)

Butler was an interesting guy. He also wrote a book claiming that the Odyssey was written by a woman.

I finished the book this evening. It started out well but lost direction and ended up being a chore to finish, mainly to the five chapters about machines, animals and vegetables.
I have read another book by Samuel Butler, The Way of all Flesh, which I really enjoyed-but it's not science fiction.

I like his idea about statues. This would solve a lot of problems today:

... no statue of any public man or woman should be allowed to remain unbroken for more than fifty years, unless at the end of that time a jury of twenty-four men taken at random from the street pronounced in favour of its being allowed a second fifty years of life. Every fifty years this reconsideration was to be repeated, and unless there was a majority of eighteen in favour of the retention of the statue, it was to be destroyed.

Rosemarie wrote: "... ended up being a chore to finish ..."

Indeed it is. I skipped the first 5 chapters, since I knew it was going to be tough.

In one of the introductions, Butler himself says that when preparing a revised edition "... I would gladly cut out some forty or fifty pages if I could. But then he does the opposite: "instead of cutting out, say fifty pages, I have been compelled to add about sixty invita Minerva �� the blame rests neither with my publisher nor with me, but with the copyright laws."

So, by his own admission, it should be about 100 pages shorter.

Now that it is in the public domain, somebody should go back to the un-revised edition and cut out some of the unnecessary stuff.

By myself, I never would have figured out what Ydgrun referred to. But wikipedia points out that if refers to the "holier-than-thou" character .

I've now read the part about the rise of the machines and did not enjoy it as much as Jim did. I'm getting really tired of this book.

While this does feel over-long, it could have been worse. At the time it was published, the trend was to add padding so that books could be published as trilogies and thus make more money on the book rental market. Frankenstein itself was originally published as a trilogy. Interesting details about that here:

Ed wrote: "Interesting details about that here:

......"

Also some interesting titles there for our next proto SF read

I finished it yesterday. It was really dry in my opinion but with lots of interesting ideas. I didnt connected at all with story and the main character but liked the descriptive chapters about erowanians. The 5 chapters at the end was my favorite part especially the book of the machines part. But even then it felt more of an imaginative article rather than a novel.

I had to force myself to finish. I admit to skimming some parts. Interesting ideas, but not great execution.

The sequel is better, but not by much.

Just as Erewhon satirized England, there is a tradition of satirizing America as "Nocirema". The original version is "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" by Horace Miner in 1956. ()

Another is "Growing up Among the Nacirema", . I don't know the author. This one mocks things like mygs and trecnocs. (Read those backwards.)

Both of those little stories are more fun than Erewhon, in part because they are short.

This is the last day of the month and I just started the book yesterday. I'm using Librivox recording for this one.

The style is rather boring, but ideas are interesting and sometimes surprisingly fresh for 1872 story