Is that a science fiction book by E. M. Forster? That was the first incredulous thought that hit me when I noticed this little gem in the window of one of my favourite second hand bookshops. Of course, the cover didn’t give away all that much, but the clock and the title implied some kind of time travel, and I so wanted to know more. If the author of A Room with a View and A Passage to India and Howards freaking End wrote sci-fi, why did I not know about it? Was it a posthumous release, like the queer classic Maurice? Did he hide it away in shame during his multi-Nobel-nominated lifetime?
It turned out that while yes, 1909’s The Machine Stops, is indeed sci-fi, it is more dystopian/apocalyptic than timey wimey, and also, at 12 000 or so words, it is a novelette, which is not a length of story much seen nowadays. The narrative moves briskly, as we encounter a future world in which humanity has given all its autonomy over to The Machine, an artificial intelligence designed to cater to every whim and desire (except freedom) and the consternation of the worldwide populace when the machine fulfills the promise of the title and ceases to function.
We are told the story through the lens of Vashti, a music scholar — most everyone is now a scholar, now that the Machine takes care of everything else — who is reluctantly persuaded to visit her son, who lives on the other side of the world. People in this future live below ground (we assume there was a surface catastrophe that drove them there), but she sees roving bands of outcast humans as she flies across the planet, and pities them their Machineless existences. Vashti’s son Kuno wanted to see his mother because he, too, has been to the surface, but without permission, and has realized that the Machine’s control of them all is stifling humanity, and making them helpless, slaves to the system.
Vashti disowns him. But he’s right, of course, as the later breakdown of the Machine illustrates.
There are so many themes explored in this short work, it is quite remarkable, and so much technology that is proposed, and has now come to pass. Skype, the internet, digital home assistants, apps and labour-saving devices… Forster was a true visionary, and it is a shame that he never wrote a full-length genre novel. (Then again, he only wrote six, which is always hard to believe.) I’ve learned that some of his other short stories are SF, though, I will be searching them all out immediately.
This is also one of the first literary examples of a machine-based dystopia, which is truly phenomenal. It is a crying shame that this genius is not more widely known, and celebrated.
It should be.
SCORECARD
TBR DAY 132: The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster
GENRE: Science Fiction
PUBLISHED: 1909
TIME ON THE TBR: ~4 years.
PURCHASED FROM: Alice’s Bookshop.
KEEP: Sure.
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