Erewhon; Or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler

At first blush, Erewhon by Samuel Butler might appear to be a standard "lost world" dystopian/utopian novel, as the novel has been seen by some as a Victorian era Gulliver's Travels.

The book, however takes a bizarre turn at Chapter XXIII when Butler begins the three chapters on Machines. In those three chapters, Butler begins to explore the idea of artificial intelligence, influenced in part by Darwin's recently published On the Origin of Species. The chapters on machines give an interesting theory on the evolution of machinery into the eventual intelligent, self replicating machines that would replace humans as the furthest end of the evolutionary scale. 

Butler was certainly ahead of his time with this idea, but it's difficult to say just how seriously he took the idea when the two chapters following the section on machines deal with animal and vegetable rights.

CHAPTER XXVI. THE VIEWS OF AN EREWHONIAN PROPHET CONCERNING THE RIGHTS OF ANIMALS and CHAPTER XXVII. THE VIEWS OF AN EREWHONIAN PHILOSOPHER CONCERNING THE RIGHTS OF VEGETABLES are obviously satirical and not serious proposals, so there is in all likelihood, the same sort of satirical leg pulling in the three chapters on Machines.

According to wikipedia, "in a 1945 broadcast, George Orwell praised the book and said that when Butler wrote Erewhon it needed 'imagination of a very high order to see that machinery could be dangerous as well as useful.' "

The novel is considered a satire on Victorian society, so a good deal of the novel goes over my head. It is, however an interesting read and an important ancestor in the evolution of the utopian/dystopian genres.