Remarkable. This short story written in 1909 is very prescient of modern society. Everything at the touch of a button.
Although we have names for the services provided by ‘The Machine’. Zoom, Spotify, Amazon, Netflix, Uber and Deliveroo spring to mind; Forster seems to have got there first.
I’m sure this story forms the base for many other sci-fi plots for films and books. There are shades of this in The Matrix, THX-1138 to name but two.
There’s also the conversation about man making the machine-it’s creator becoming subservient and worshiping the machine to be considered.
An intriguing short story and well worth the read. ( )

One of my favourite short stories, feeling so timeless: beautifully written and beautifully tragic (and still the only Forster I've ever read!). This was a pleasure to reread!

http://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/recent-reads-e-m-forster... ( )

This small volume contains two stories; The Machine stops (1928) and The Celestial Omnibus (1911).

The Machine stops is a dystopian tale of humanity's underground automated future life, isolated from each other save via telecommunications; and what happens when they turn their collective backs on human interaction and the pursuit of what might in those days have been called the "practical arts". In the end, society breaks down, the Machine stops, and all die (except for isolated groups of humans who actually live on the surface). In 1928, this probably seemed like almost pure fantasy; today, it's not difficult to read it as a cautionary allegory of our modern situation.

The Celestial Omnibus is a slight tale of a little boy who discovers a mysterious bus that takes him to a realm of fantasy where the figures of myth and art live and have discourse. A doubting adult accompanies him, and his doubts are his downfall (literally). It is slightly reminiscent of Saki, with whom it was contemporary. ( )