Literature Network » Samuel Butler

Books: Fiction: When pigoons attack, readers run for cover Oryx and Crake By Margaret Atwood BLOOMSBURY pounds 16.99 pounds 14.99 (+ pounds 2.25 P&P PER ORDER) 0870 800 1122

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From: The Independent on Sunday
Date: 20030601
Author:Catherine Pepinster

People can't wait to get to the future. They appeal to psychics to use their powers to discover what lies over the horizon; they read tea-leaves and consult astrologers. Yet coupled with this enthusiasm there is also a dread about what's coming next. It's fertile ground for writers of science fiction. When Samuel Butler depicted a hideous world of machines in Erewhon, he played with the Victorians' fears about their own increasingly mechanised industrial age. H G Wells envisaged the future as a truly nightmarish place with The Time Machine, where all our longings for a golden age are brought ...

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