mrw311 - AnthologyMain MenuIntroductionThe Gatling Gun and Machine GunsRifles and HandgunsIronclad Battleships and Torpedo TechnologyThe Boer WarsStagnation and Fear of DestructionAnxious, Fictional Accounts of the FutureBibliographyMatthew Werkheiserbaf3c422a98f36dbd4c83c180176ff0854fcbc18
12016-11-27T17:33:25-05:00The Book of Machines2plain2016-11-28T20:08:18-05:00These chapters are pulled from Samuel Butler's novel Erewhon and they explain how the Erewhonians did not want to become slaves to technology and as a result forbid all but a few select devices. As the "Book" explains, the machines, in a sense, had a soul and the citizens of Erewhon feared that they would spend all their time feeding the machines that their lives would inevitably come to depend on. Several of the articles mentioned earlier in this anthology articulate the anxieties felt by many in the British military, such as the growing necessity for better transportation methods for new equipment, and the constant need to keep updating weapons and defenses to stay ahead of other nations. The usurpation feared in the book, to a degree, begins to occur in Britain, as the invention of one technology demands the invention of others in order for the first technology to be useful and practical.