THE MACHINE STOPS: Science Fiction Dystopia - A Doomsday Saga of Humanity under the Control of Machines
Mar 2017 · e-artnow
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The Machine Stops 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 room, with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine. Travel is permitted, but is unpopular and rarely necessary. Communication is also made via a kind of machine with which people conduct their only activity: the sharing of ideas and what passes for knowledge. In such a suffocating atmosphere Kuno, a man dares to think and do the unmentionable, that is, question the omnipotence of the faulty machine God…. E. M. Forster (1879-1970) was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society. A Passage to India (1924) brought him his greatest success and he was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 16 different years.
The Machine Stops 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 room, with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine. Travel is permitte...
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4 reviews
Monkfish2 Monkfish2
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April 5, 2026
In the far future, humanity lives alone in underground cells, tended by the all-providing Machine. Vashti, a devout shut-in, recoils when her son Kuno urges her to visit him in person. He has done the unthinkable: climbed out, breathed open air, seen living earth. The system drags him back and threatens erasure. Vashti returns home, certain he is deranged. The Machine begins to falter. Music warps, air sours, complaints vanish into committees, and dependence deepens into worship. Written in 1909, E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops sketches a world of screens, remote lectures, and secondhand thought that feels annoyingly familiar. Comfort dulls desire; mediation replaces experience. Kuno’s rebellion is bodily, a reminder that unused capacities decay. Thin on character, sharp on insight, it argues that when systems take over, people shrink to fit them. ❤️ 🇮🇱
Reuben Brown
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January 27, 2020
Read this book as a child, although it is fiction , the things it spoke to is happening in today's world.
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