The Machine ostensibly protects them, but it also cuts them off from authentic human connection, the beauty of the natural world, and their own emotions. By labeling any criticism of the Machine as sacrilege, the Book encourages humanity to embrace a technology that limits them more than it helps them. For one, blind worship of the Book distracts humanity from the question they should have been asking all along: namely, whether the Machine is actually good for them. The Book becomes the object of Vashti’s prayers, as she kisses it and murmurs “O Machine!” whenever she is in distress.īut the sense of security that the Book provides is clearly misguided. Vashti’s attitude toward the Book is typical of a fanatically religious person: she finds a great sense of security in the Book, believing that it contains everything she could ever need to know. Consequently, people have come to religiously worship the Machine as something mysterious and all-powerful, creating an elaborate belief system that substitutes a piece of technology for a deity and treats the Book as is its sacred text. In the dystopian society of “The Machine Stops,” people live underground because they Earth’s surface is apparently no longer habitable, and the complex technological system known as the Machine ostensibly provides them with all their needs (air, food, shelter, communication, entertainment). This is a truly remarkable story and one that has many lessons of caution for today.Īfter being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965, it was included that same year in the populist anthology Modern Short Stories and in 1973 was also included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame.The Book, an elaborate user’s manual for the Machine, symbolizes the dangers of blind faith. The story has proved to be far ahead of its time, with remarkably accurate predictions of modern technologies such as TV, online chat, and the Internet. A problem arises when one man, Kuno, decides he is not satisfied with staying in his room and decides to explore outside.

They communicate with each other and attend 'online' classes and meetings through the Machine, and people seldom meet face to face. It describes a world of the future in which humans all remain in their cubicles while all their needs are met by a supercomputer called 'The Machine'. In 1909, he wrote his only science-fiction story, and it proved to be a shocker. Forster is known primarily as a great English novelest of such books as A Passage to India, A Room with a View, and Where Angels Fear to Tread.

The machine stops read online