The Machine Stops

"The Machine Stops"
Author E. M. Forster
Country England
Language English
Genre(s) Science fiction short story
Published in The Oxford and Cambridge Review
Publisher Archibald Constable
Media type Print (Magazine, Hardback & Paperback)
Publication date November 1909

"The Machine Stops" is a science fiction short story (12,300 words) by E. M. Forster. After initial publication in The Oxford and Cambridge Review (November 1909), the story was republished in Forster's The Eternal Moment and Other Stories in 1928. After being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965, it was included that same year in the populist anthology Modern Short Stories.[1] In 1973 it was also included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two.

The story, set in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity lives underground and relies on a giant machine to provide their needs, predicted new technologies such as instant messaging and the Internet.

Plot summary

The story describes a world in which most of the human population has lost the ability to live on the surface of the Earth. Each individual now lives in isolation below ground in a standard 'cell', with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine. Travel is permitted but unpopular and rarely necessary. Communication is made via a kind of instant messaging/video conferencing machine with which people conduct their only activity: the sharing of ideas and what passes for knowledge.

The two main characters, Vashti and her son Kuno, live on opposite sides of the world. Vashti is content with her life, which, like most inhabitants of the world, she spends producing and endlessly discussing secondhand 'ideas'. Kuno, however, is a sensualist and a rebel. He persuades a reluctant Vashti to endure the journey (and the resultant unwelcome personal interaction) to his cell. There, he tells her of his disenchantment with the sanitised, mechanical world.

He confides to her that he has visited the surface of the Earth without permission and that he saw other humans living outside the world of the Machine. However, the Machine recaptured him, and he has been threatened with 'Homelessness', that is, expulsion from the underground environment and presumed death. Vashti, however, dismisses her son's concerns as dangerous madness and returns to her part of the world.

As time passes, and Vashti continues the routine of her daily life, there are two important developments. First, the life support apparatus required to visit the outer world is abolished. Most welcome this development, as they are skeptical and fearful of first-hand experience and of those who desire it. Secondly, a kind of religion is re-established, in which the Machine is the object of worship. People forget that humans created the Machine, and treat it as a mystical entity whose needs supersede their own.

Those who do not accept the deity of the Machine are viewed as 'unmechanical' and threatened with Homelessness. The Mending Apparatus—the system charged with repairing defects that appear in the Machine proper—has also failed by this time, but concerns about this are dismissed in the context of the supposed omnipotence of the Machine itself.

During this time, Kuno is transferred to a cell near Vashti's. He comes to believe that the Machine is breaking down, and tells her cryptically "The Machine stops." Vashti continues with her life, but eventually defects begin to appear in the Machine. At first, humans accept the deteriorations as the whim of the Machine, to which they are now wholly subservient, but the situation continues to deteriorate, as the knowledge of how to repair the Machine has been lost.

Finally, the Machine apocalyptically collapses, bringing 'civilization' down with it. Kuno comes to Vashti's ruined cell. Before they perish, they realise that Man and his connection to the natural world are what truly matter, and that it will fall to the surface-dwellers who still exist to rebuild the human race and to prevent the mistake of the Machine from being repeated.

Themes

In the preface to his Collected Short Stories (1947), Forster wrote that "The Machine Stops is a reaction to one of the earlier heavens of H. G. Wells." In The Time Machine, Wells had pictured the childlike Eloi living the life of leisure of Greek gods whilst the working Morlocks lived underground and kept their whole idyllic existence going. In contrast to Wells' political commentary, Forster points to the technology itself as the ultimate controlling force.

Adaptations

Derivative works

See also

References

  1. ↑ Modern Short Stories, S. H. Burton ed., Longman Heritage of Literature series, Longman Group Ltd, Great Britain, first published 1965, sixth impression 1970
  2. ↑ "WCPN Program Highlights". Retrieved 12 November 2007.
  3. ↑ "Afternoon Play: The Machine Stops". BBC Genome. BBC Radio 4 FM. 2001-04-24. Retrieved 2015-03-29.
  4. ↑ "The Machine Stops (mini-series)".
  5. ↑ "The Machine Stops: Did E M Forster predict the internet age?" by Chris Long, BBC, 18 May 2016
  6. ↑ ""The Nostrand Zone" by Bhob Stewart". Retrieved 24 September 2015.
  7. ↑ "MAD MAGAZINE NEVER STOPS- 1952 MAD version of MACHINE STOPS (Video)". Retrieved 24 September 2015.
  8. ↑ Hajdu, David. The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. p. 199. Retrieved 24 September 2015.

Further reading

External links

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