![]() ![]() I enjoyed it even more than some of the stories, which were a tad over-familiar to an old-timer like me: ‘The Machine Stops’ (Forster) ‘The Evitable Conflict’ (Asimov) ‘Two-Handed Engine’ (Moore & Kuttner). Mike Ashley’s Introduction – nay, scholarly monograph – is full of half-forgotten facts like that. ![]() Change ‘mechanical’ to ‘electronic’ and ‘machines’ to ‘computers’ and only the slightly archaic style would give the game away. Ascribed to ‘Cellarius’ but actually written by Samuel ( Erewhon) Butler. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question.”Ī: It comes from an essay, ‘Darwin Among the Machines’, published in the June 1863 issue of a New Zealand magazine called The Press. “Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us day by day we are becoming more subservient to them more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. Q: Spot the year of first publication (+ or – 20 years): This review first appeared in The BSFA Review. ![]()
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