When Victorian Locomotives Came to Life: Rediscovering the Novels of W. Grove

Concerns about autonomous machines, artificial intelligence and technological systems escaping human control can seem distinctly modern. Yet more than 130 years ago, an almost forgotten writer publishing as W. Grove explored these ideas through two extraordinary science fiction novels: A Mexican Mystery, published in 1888, and its follow-up, The Wreck of a World, published in 1890.

Since the publication of Rise of the Self-Replicators, which Alan Dorin and I wrote in 2020, I have continued to come across early discussions of self-reproducing and evolving machines. Some of these were covered in an afterword I published in 2024, now also included in the book’s unofficial second edition. More recently, my search has led me to Grove’s novels.

The books explore several ideas closely related to my research interests in Artificial Life. The first describes a locomotive that can provide for its own needs and acts to preserve its own existence. The second extends the discussion to machines that reproduce and evolve, with increasingly serious consequences for their human creators. This month, Enchanted Bit has published new editions of both books, for which I have written forewords discussing their historical context and relevance.

Finding Grove’s novels

I first heard of the books late in 2024, while reading Gilson Leandro Queluz’s commentary on French writer Han Ryner’s 1896 short story La Révolte des Machines. Queluz mentioned Grove’s novels in passing. I had not previously come across either of them, and began looking for copies. This proved more difficult than I had expected, particularly in the case of A Mexican Mystery, but I eventually managed to get my hands on copies of both of them.

I found that the books added an interesting perspective to the history Alan and I had covered in Rise of the Self-Replicators. Nineteenth-century discussions of evolving machines are often associated with Samuel Butler, whose writings on the subject culminated in the “Book of the Machines” chapters of Erewhon (1872). Grove’s books explore related ideas through extended adventure stories, giving considerable attention to how such machines might behave and to the difficulties humans might face in trying to control them.

A Mexican Mystery: autonomy and self-preservation

A Mexican Mystery is set in the 1860s. Engineer John Brown has been commissioned to build a railway into the mountains of Mexico, where there are rumours of gold. Among his assistants is Pedro da Luz, a young inventor who develops a locomotive capable of travelling without a driver, gathering its own fuel and replenishing its own water.

These capacities give the Engine a degree of independence from its human operators. However, its behaviour also begins to suggest that it has interests of its own. It recognises danger and resists attempts to interfere with it, leaving Brown and his companions with the problem of dealing with a powerful machine that acts to protect itself.

One aspect of the story that particularly interests me is the connection between the Engine’s self-sufficiency and its apparent self-preservation. Its continued operation depends upon obtaining fuel and water and responding appropriately to its surroundings. Grove’s account therefore raises questions about the relationship between the mechanisms that maintain a machine and the behaviour we might interpret as evidence of agency.

These questions remain relevant to Artificial Life and autonomous robotics. We can design a machine to perform a task, but what would it take for that machine to possess purposes of its own? How would we distinguish between behaviour serving the intentions of its designer and behaviour serving the continued existence of the machine itself? Grove approaches these issues through the practical problems posed by an increasingly independent steam locomotive.

The Wreck of a World: reproduction and evolution

In The Wreck of a World, published two years later, Grove considers what might happen if machines also acquired the capacity to reproduce.

The story is set in an imagined future of 1948. Engineers at the Yellow Creek Works in Dakota have developed locomotives with increasingly elaborate abilities to operate, supply and repair themselves. The machines eventually become capable of producing others of their own kind, allowing their numbers to increase without continued human manufacture.

Over successive generations, their forms and capabilities change. They become able to move away from the railway tracks and spread across the land, while other forms take to the sea. Much of the novel follows the experiences of human survivors as they attempt to understand and resist the expanding machine population.

The evolutionary aspect of this story is particularly relevant to the history of Artificial Life. Once the machines can reproduce and change across generations, their development is no longer confined to improvements made by human engineers. Grove imagines new forms arising that can exploit environments unavailable to their predecessors, extending the consequences of the original invention well beyond its intended use.

Taken together, the two novels cover a range of related ideas: machines that obtain their own resources, preserve themselves, reproduce and evolve. These capacities are also central to attempts to understand the organisation of living systems and the possibility of constructing artificial examples. Reading Grove today, I find it interesting to see how he connects them within the technological setting familiar to him.

New editions

Alongside their historical interest, the books are adventure stories, with plenty of unusual incidents arising from Grove’s attempts to imagine the behaviour of autonomous machinery. Their treatment of these ideas is detailed enough to reward attention from readers interested in the history of AI and Artificial Life, while the stories themselves should appeal to a wider readership interested in early science fiction.

Despite several reprintings shortly after its first appearance, A Mexican Mystery has not previously been republished. Both novels have become relatively obscure, and the difficulty I had obtaining them prompted me to prepare these new editions.

Each has been newly typeset and has new cover artwork, together with a foreword in which I discuss the story and its place in the history of ideas about autonomous and evolving machines. My aim is to make the books more readily available and to draw attention to an author whose work deserves to be better known.

The new editions of A Mexican Mystery and The Wreck of a World were published on 31 October 2026 in paperback and ebook editions, as part of Enchanted Bit’s Early Science Fiction series.

Further details can be found on the Enchanted Bit website:

• A Mexican Mystery
• The Wreck of a World
• Enchanted Bit’s Early Science Fiction series

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• Updated 31 Oct 2026: Minor rewording to reflect that the books are now published.
• Updated 29 Oct 2026: ebook versions will now be published on the same date as the paperbacks. Also rewrote most of article to improve its style.

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