Samuel Butler Publishes Erewhon

For further proof that our fear of producing intelligent machines that could one day overtake us is nothing new, see Samuel Butler's satirical novel Erewhon; or, Over the Range.

In the book, its narrator finds a hidden country whose people destroyed every machine invented in the previous 271 years, persuaded by a book that noticed machines were evolving faster than living things and might one day become conscious. Ring a bell?