The Machine Stops
| "The Machine Stops" | |
|---|---|
| Author | E. M. Forster |
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction short story |
| Published in | The Oxford and Cambridge Review |
| Publisher | Archibald Constable |
| Media type | Print (Magazine, Hardback & Paperback) |
| Publication date | November 1909 |
"The Machine Stops" is a science fiction short story (12,300 words) by E. M. Forster. After initial publication in The Oxford and Cambridge Review (November 1909), the story was republished in Forster's The Eternal Moment and Other Stories in 1928. After being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965, it was included that same year in the populist anthology Modern Short Stories.[1] In 1973 it was also included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two.
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[edit] Plot summary
The story 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 'cell', with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine. Travel is permitted but unpopular and rarely necessary. Communication is made via a kind of instant messaging/video conferencing machine called the speaking apparatus, with which people conduct their only activity, the sharing of ideas and knowledge. The two main characters, Vashti and her son Kuno, live on opposite sides of the world. Vashti is content with her life, which, like most inhabitants of the world, she spends producing and endlessly discussing secondhand 'ideas'. Kuno, however, is a sensualist and a rebel. He persuades a reluctant Vashti to endure the journey (and the resultant unwelcome personal interaction) to his cell. There, he tells her of his disenchantment with the sanitized, mechanical world. He confides to her that he has visited the surface of the Earth without permission, and without the life support apparatus supposedly required to endure the toxic outer air, and that he saw other humans living outside the world of the Machine. However, the Machine recaptured him, and he has been threatened with 'Homelessness', that is, expulsion from the underground environment and presumed death. Vashti, however, dismisses her son's concerns as dangerous madness and returns to her part of the world.
As time passes, and Vashti continues the routine of her daily life, there are two important developments. First, the life support apparatus required to visit the outer world is abolished. Most welcome this development, as they are skeptical and fearful of first-hand experience and of those who desire it. Secondly, a kind of religion is re-established, in which the Machine is the object of worship. People forget that humans created the Machine, and treat it as a mystical entity whose needs supersede their own. Those who do not accept the deity of the Machine are viewed as 'unmechanical' and threatened with Homelessness. The Mending Apparatus - the system charged with repairing defects that appear in the Machine proper - has also failed by this time, but concerns about this are dismissed in the context of the supposed omnipotence of the Machine itself.
During this time, Kuno is transferred to a cell near Vashti's. He comes to believe that the Machine is breaking down, and tells her cryptically, "The Machine stops." Vashti continues with her life, but eventually defects begin to appear in the Machine. At first, humans accept the deteriorations as the whim of the Machine, to which they are now wholly subservient. But the situation continues to deteriorate, as the knowledge of how to repair the Machine has been lost. Finally the Machine apocalyptically collapses, bringing 'civilization' down with it. Kuno comes to Vashti's ruined cell, however, and before they perish they realize that Man and his connection to the natural world are what truly matter, and that it will fall to the surface-dwellers who still exist to rebuild the human race and to prevent the mistake of the Machine from being repeated.
[edit] Commentary
In the preface to his Collected Short Stories (1947), Forster wrote that "The Machine Stops is a reaction to one of the earlier heavens of H. G. Wells." Although not all Wells's stories were optimistic about the future, this implies Forster was concerned about human dependence on technology.
The story predicted several technological and social innovations, such as the 'cinematophote' (television) and videoconferencing. Forster also sought to establish the value of direct experience, which is threatened by excessive involvement in virtual communities. This shows remarkable foresight, and the book describes many nuances of "online life" over 60 years before the Internet was even invented. The final destruction of the mechanical society of the Machine is not without hope, in that Kuno and Vashti recapture a part of the spirit of life and embrace each other for the first time, a mother and her son.
[edit] Adaptations
In 1952, the story was adapted and satirized by Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood as "Blobs!" in the first issue of Kurtzman's Mad. It goes through several steps of human history, chronicling the rise of machines. They first look at the caveman's machines (brusque clubs designed to knock females out so as to be more suitable to drag to caves), then the machines of the 1950s, such as vacuum cleaners, electric blankets, light bulbs, air conditioning, television, cars, and so on. It then delves into the future — by 2000, most men's offices are masses of machinery; by 20,000, it is "no longer necessary for a man to leave his seat once he sat down to work"; and by 100,000, women are permanently fixed in machines that serve any conceivable purpose. The satire made no mention of Forster's story, yet it retained several key elements of the original, including the machine supplying all human needs, the failure of the machine that repairs and the complete breakdown of the machine (called the "Master Monster Machine" in "Blobs!") in the closing panels.
A television adaptation, directed by Philip Saville, was shown in the UK on 6 October 1966 as part of the British science-fiction anthology TV series Out of the Unknown.
Playwright Eric Coble's 2004 stage adaptation was broadcast on 16 November 2007 on WCPN 90.3 FM in Cleveland.[2]
Similar motifs in Polish science fiction include:
- Sexmission, a 1984 film by Juliusz Machulski
- Paradyzja, a 1984 novel by Janusz A. Zajdel
The 1965 French science fiction film Alphaville directed by Jean-Luc Godard has similar dystopian themes, where the inhabitants of Alphaville are reduced to mindless drones by its omnipotent ruler; a giant computer called 'Alpha 60'. Logan's Run, also borrows heavily from this motif of a society totally under the rules of a computer and system set in motion hundreds of years before the current inhabitants.
The above three involve similar ideas of an isolated artificial habitat with mass deception being perpetrated about the nature and habitability of the outer world. To some extent, these motifs could be read as veiled political metaphors of the "fake reality" in which the citizens of the Eastern Bloc had been forcefully kept by their governments during the Iron Curtain and Cold War era.
The 2008 film WALL-E includes several similar motifs, most notably a human race that has transformed into severely obese individuals, living on soft food and communicating entirely through projection screens. Their every need and comfort is provided by a "machine," in this case an interstellar cruise ship, which is controlled by an autopilot.
Similar themes are also present in the 2006 film Idiocracy, in which a future humanity has become profoundly stupid and ignorant due to a combination of the alleged tendency for the thoughtless and imprudent to outbreed the more intelligent and capable, and also an overabundance of automated and user-friendly devices that make competence and practical knowledge unnecessary in daily life, and hence removing evolutionary barriers to the proliferation of their offspring. By the period depicted in the film, there are signs that the infrastructure that made such a lifestyle viable is falling apart but, in much the same manner of Forster's future humans' failure to realise the implications of the mending apparatus itself being broken, the population are now too stupid either to repair the coddling infrastructure they depend upon or even comprehend the threat its failure poses to their survival.
[edit] Citations in other media
Stephen Baxter's story Glass Earth Inc., which refers explicitly to "The Machine Stops", is included in the book Phase Space.
The song The Machine Stops by the band Level 42 not only shares the same title with the story but also has lyrics that echo Kuno's thoughts.
[edit] References
- ^ Modern Short Stories, S. H. Burton ed., Longman Heritage of Literature series, Longman Group Ltd, Great Britain, first published 1965, sixth impression 1970
- ^ "WCPN Program Highlights". http://www.wcpn.org/schedule/highlights.html. Retrieved 2007-11-12.
[edit] Further reading
- Seegert, Alf (2010), "Technology and the Fleshly Interface in E.M. Forster's 'The Machine Stops'", Journal of Ecocriticism 2: 1.
- Napier, Susan J. (November 2002). "When the Machines Stop: Fantasy, Reality, and Terminal Identity in Neon Genesis Evangelion and Serial Experiments Lain". Science Fiction Studies 29 (88): 418–435. ISSN 00917729. http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/abstracts/a88.htm#Napier. Retrieved May 4, 2007.
[edit] External links
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Wikisource has original text related to this article: |
- IMDb: Out of This World: "The Machine Stops"
- Listen to an audio recording of the story from Librivox
- Animated adaptation of the story by The Freise Brothers
- Watch the 1966 BBC adaptation online
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