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    The Machine Stops
    The Machine Stops
    The Machine Stops
    Audiobook1 hour

    The Machine Stops

    Written by E.M. Forster

    Narrated by LibriVox Community

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    The Machine Stops is a short science fiction story. It describes a world in which almost all humans have lost the ability to live on the surface of the Earth. Each individual lives in isolation in a 'cell', with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine. Most humans welcome this development, as they are skeptical and fearful of first-hand experience. 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 are threatened with "Homelessness". Eventually, the Machine apocalyptically collapses, and the civilization of the Machine comes to an end. (Wikipedia)

    Comment by book coordinator:A condensed rapidfire of details and ideas imagining a dystopian world. Good thing he made it a short story. And the world he describes feels so appalling, although we are good on the way to be where Forster imagined us - shocker. So imaginative for 1909! Staying at home with the telly and internet and instant messaging and videoconferencing, google and pizza delivery and all flats and all cities look alike. And the loss of Patience! Damn this is good and so true - with one big exception the many buttons for all the machines functions. But how would Forster know of digital interfaces? That would have been too much to foresee.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLibriVox
    Release dateAug 25, 2014
    Author

    E.M. Forster

    Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) was an English novelist, short story writer and essayist best known for his books A Room with a View, Howards End and A Passage to India. Born in London as the only child to parents Edward and Lily Forster, Edward inherited a considerable sum of money from his paternal great-aunt that allowed him to embark on a career as a writer. He attended Tonbridge School in Kent but did not enjoy his time there. He then went to King's College in Cambridge where he joined a secret society known as the Apostles, several members of which later helped form the Bloomsbury Group, a literary/philosophical society that boasted such early members as Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes and Vanessa Bell. Upon graduation, Forster went abroad - often escorted by his mother - and wrote of his travels extensively. Upon his return, he set up residence in Weybridge, Surrey where he would write all six of his novels. All of his books were written between 1908 and 1924 and his last, A Passage to India, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Forster was a homosexual and while he never married, he did have several affairs with male lovers during his lifetime, including a forty-year romance with married policeman Bob Buckingham, at whose home he collapsed and died at age 91 of a stroke. Forster explored his struggle with his own sexuality in his book Maurice. Forster was extremely critical of American foreign policy during his lifetime and rebuffed efforts to film adaptations of his novels due to the fact that the productions would likely use American financing. After his death, however, several of his books were made into films and three of them - A Room with a View, Howards End and A Passage to India are among the most highly regarded films of the late 20th century.

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