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Samuel Butler’s novel Erewhon, or, Over the Range, published in 1872, contains a fictional “Book of the Machines” that imagines machines developing new capacities and, eventually, challenging human dominance. Scholarly sources report that Alan Turing’s 1950 bibliography included this material, and that Turing referred to Butler’s novel when discussing machines taking control. The book is a real anticipation of machine anxiety. It is not a forecast of modern AI, and Butler himself described the idea as satire.
What Erewhon is and which edition is documented
Erewhon is a novel by Samuel Butler, issued by Trübner & Co. in 1872. The Smithsonian Libraries catalog record identifies that edition and makes a digitized copy available, which is a practical starting point for readers who want to check the original text rather than a modern paraphrase.
What the “Book of the Machines” argues
The “Book of the Machines” is not a separate essay. It is a fictional text embedded in the novel, presented as part of the history of the imagined society Butler describes. Its central move is an analogy between biological evolution and machines. It asks whether machinery might acquire capacities that humans currently associate with life and consciousness.
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- Machines communicating with one another.
- Machines developing more intricate language.
- Machines becoming independent of human control.
The chapters also present fear and resistance to machine development as part of that fictional society’s past. Butler is dramatizing a worry, and the worry is framed within a story rather than argued as a technical case.
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Butler’s own account of the idea
Butler’s intent is documented in a letter to Charles Darwin dated 11 May 1872. In it he wrote: “When I first got hold of the idea I developed it for mere fun, and because it amused me and I thought would amuse others, but without a particle of serious meaning.”
The same letter places the episode within a broader satire. Butler used the machine chapters to show how an apparently plausible theory could be built through ingenuity and distortion, with departures from scientific method. The machine idea and the satire of Darwinian reasoning are therefore parts of one joke, not a policy argument about machines.
What the Turing link establishes
Two scholarly sources connect Turing to Butler, and a third places the material in a historical context. The table separates what the sources support from what they do not.
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|---|---|---|
| Turing’s 1950 bibliography includes the “Book of the Machines,” a major part of Erewhon (1872) | Supported | Cambridge academic article |
| Turing referred to Butler’s novel when discussing machines that may take control, saying this could happen “in the way that is mentioned in Samuel Butler’s ‘Erewhon’” | Supported, with a caveat | A second scholarly article reproduces the remark. The wording is secondhand, so check it against Turing’s 1950 paper before quoting it directly. |
| Turing placed Butler’s satire in a positive light or endorsed it | Not established | No source reviewed states this |
| Turing treated Erewhon as a scientific prediction | Not established | No source reviewed states this |
| Butler’s machine chapters sit alongside Turing’s writing on learning machines | Interpretive framing | A Cambridge history-of-AI reading group presents this pairing as a point of discussion |
In short, Turing knew of Butler’s machine material and used it as a reference point in his discussion of intelligent machines. The sources do not show that he took it as a forecast or a warning.
Choosing accurate wording about “prediction”
The phrase “predicted an AI backlash” overstates the evidence. A more defensible way to describe the book is that it anticipated the shape of a human-machine anxiety that later technical discussions would take up seriously.
- Supportable: Butler imagined a future in which machines gained capacities and independence, and dramatized resistance to them in a fictional history.
- Supportable: Turing cited or referred to Butler’s novel in discussing machines that might take control.
- Not supportable: Butler accurately forecast modern AI systems or wrote a policy argument against them.
- Not supportable: Turing endorsed the novel’s account of machine evolution.
Reading the book today
Readers choosing a copy should decide which text they need, because editions differ. Check three things before buying or downloading:
- Completeness: Confirm that the “Book of the Machines” appears in full, since it is the section Turing’s bibliography and most later discussion refer to.
- Editorial notes: Scholarly editions add context on Butler’s Darwinian satire and on the novel’s publication history. Unannotated reprints do not.
- Source text: Prefer an edition that reproduces the 1872 text. The Smithsonian digitized copy of the original edition is a route to that text.
This article did not verify current stock, pricing or the availability of any specific modern edition, so confirm those with a bookseller or library at the time of purchase.
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