The Machine Stops
By E. M. Forster
SF authors score a lot of points for getting the future right, and E. M. Forster’s 1909 novella (or “meditation,” as he calls it) looks pretty good with a century-plus of hindsight.
Most of humanity have moved underground where they live in monastic cells, cared for by a mighty Machine and basically devolving into giant grubs (“white pap,” or a fungus) while connecting to others virtually by way of a proto-Internet. The pursuit of comfort has led to a paradoxical decadence: a “civilization” given over entirely to the life of the mind that’s helpless when faced with a mechanical crisis. The lectures and “ideas” that are its raison d’être all have to do with history and the arts, and there are no engineers.
Written as a response to The Time Machine, it’s a story that presents a similarly divided world where the Morlocks have gotten soft, and the Eloi more muscular and healthy by living close to nature. But what city would Forster have seen himself being a citizen of? This may be the real meaning of Homelessness.
Alex on SF 
Oh yuck, giant white grubs isn’t good.
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I’ve heard that they were the inspiration for the couch potatoes in WALL-E. It’s what happens when you live underground all the time and don’t get any exercise.
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I have been traumatised by them in the past. They ate the roots of all my cauliflowers and were quite vile. Blerk.
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About twenty or twenty-five years ago they were bad here. Only year we ever lost a crop. They ate the roots of all the wheat. Also did a number on local golf courses and everyone’s lawn. But they never came back like that.
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I’m just buying cauliflowers from the shops now!
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This was a good story. I like how hopeful it is at the end. The human spirit still had some indomitable’ness about it then 🙂
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It is a good one, and still has some bite seeing as we’re becoming more and more like the citizens of the underworld. Not sure many of them are going to make it though. It’s going to be up to all those hardy surface dwellers.
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Oh, I figured the death rate among the machine coddled was going to be something like 99.99%.
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