Erewhon / Samuel Butler

'We object to progress,' said the venerable Professor of Worldly Wisdom. When the traveller Higgs discovers the remote land of Erewhon he finds a strange race who have forbidden the use of machines, who treat their sick like criminals and their criminals like sick people, who suppress originality and hold that the greatest scholarly achievement is proficiency in the study of unreason and hypothetics. The great debunker of the social and religious hypocrisy of his day, Samuel Butler began to write this satirical novel shortly after he had read The Origin of Species, which influenced him greatly. First published in 1872, Erewhon still retains its freshness and originality and we have as much to learn from it as ever.