BUTLER, Samuel

(1835-1902)

   UK writer, educated at Cambridge, never married, emigrated to live in New Zealand 1859-64, best known for his posthumously published autobiographical novel, The Way of all Flesh (1903), which describes the conflict between SB and his minister father, the conflict that also provided much of the force of the SATIRE on RELIGION in his two UTOPIAS, Erewhon, or Over the Range (1872; rev 1872; rev 1901) and Erewhon Revisited (1901), in which the Musical Banks closely resemble the 19th-century Established Church. Erewhon and its sequel are set in a New Zealand utopia where MACHINES have been banned for many years, because (in a harsh parody of Darwin's theory of EVOLUTION, which SB disliked) of human fears that machines, in their rapid evolutionary progress, would soon supplant Man. The visitor to this utopia - which mixes DYSTOPIAN elements freely with its more attractive aspects - is named Higgs, and his eventual escape from Erewhon in a balloon triggers a new religion in that country, Sunchildism. The sequel is devoted mainly to this faith and Higgs's effect upon it on his return, in an analogical satire on Christianity's origins and growth and the legend of the Second Coming. SB was a compulsive speculator in and chivvier at ideas, and his two utopias are densely packed with parodic commentary on all aspects of 19th-century civilization. The calibre of his mind is indicated by his suggested modification to Darwin's theory - that more than chance was required to explain the variations that make for survival. In this he prefigured some of Darwin's own later thought, though generally his anti-Darwinian propaganda displayed a cavalier attitude to scientific evidence.

   JC/DIM

   See also: ANONYMOUS SF AUTHORS; AUTOMATION; HISTORY OF SF; HUMOUR; MUSIC; NEW ZEALAND; PROTO SCIENCE FICTION; TECHNOLOGY.