7 ms·

The Machine Stops (1909) [pdf]

129 points by animal_spirits 5y ago

kinard 5y ago
This book started my love of Science Fiction. My English teacher gave it to me when I was about 13. I wasn't very focused in school, but I fell in love with this book. My teacher obviously knew me well, it was short, but very well written. Thank you teacher.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
samizdis 5y ago
It's interesting, to me, what prompted Forster to write this. From the "themes" section [1] of the Wikipedia page about the story: 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." In The Time Machine, Wells had pictured the childlike Eloi living the life of leisure of Greek gods whilst the working Morlocks lived underground and kept their whole idyllic existence going. In contrast to Wells' political commentary, Forster points to the technology itself as the ultimate controlling force. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops#Themes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops#Themes
MarkusWandel 5y ago
There are periodic waves of fear that the machine will, in fact, stop. The machine being an immeasurably complex global network of just-in-time delivery, high efficiency (but not necessarily sustainable) food production and so on. That once broken, this system may not be easily restarted, at least quickly enough to prevent disaster. Y2K and COVID being the most recent such waves. Probably this is why this old short story still resonates so strongly.
- titzer 5y ago
  A solar flare or a coronal mass ejection that hits Earth would be catastrophically bad.
- Syonyk 5y ago
  > That once broken, this system may not be easily restarted, at least quickly enough to prevent disaster. This is quite literally what we're seeing with currently supply chain shortages, food shortages, etc. The machine breaking down. It turns out, it cannot be easily stopped and restarted.
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    So far so good? At least here in the West, other than a short panic of "We're going to run out of forests that they felled that we need to wipe shit from our asses!". But maybe things are falling apart in the background, with things like global shipping insanity, and food price hikes http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/ http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/ . But cable news is busy talking about the things cable news talk about.
jerf 5y ago
This piece was well ahead of its time. I don't think I can claim with a straight face that it could be written today without change, of course, but I am comfortable saying that if someone told me this was written in the 1960s that I would have a hard time proving them wrong. And that's not something most stories from 1909 can say. And the changes necessary to bring it up to date even today are not that great, honestly. For instance, "By her side, on the little reading-desk, was a survival from the ages of litter — one book. This was the Book of the Machine. In it were instructions against every possible contingency. If she was hot or cold or dyspeptic or at a loss for a word, she went to the book, and it told her which button to press. The Central Committee published it. In accordance with a growing habit, it was richly bound." would need some tweaking. Today we could be even lazier and simply ask for these things, in voice. But all in all, well ahead of its time.
- jkestner 5y ago
  In a world where old graphic manuals are reissued on Kickstarter and people buy hardcover books or vinyl just to have a beautiful functional object, what needs updating even there? I think it correctly notes that we tend to make new physical artifacts to retain experiences that have become disembodied and abstracted away from us.
  - jerf 5y ago
    Actually, it was the "button press" that I think is out of date, for much the same reason the original Enterprise bridge looks very silly nowadays. We don't need huge arrays of buttons like that anymore. We may still want a few physical ones, of course, just as we like physical volume and climate controls in our cars, but our 21st century Machine rooms would not have hundreds of buttons in them, but a touchscreen and voice interface. Even if we had a physical manual for it, which I'm totally comfortable with as a story choice. You may have simply automatically upgraded the interface in your head, but I'm pretty sure the author was envisioning something more like the Enterprise bridge.
    - qayxc 5y ago
awezsdg 5y ago
FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS!
dotsam 5y ago
If you prefer to listen rather than read, there are free librivox recordings of this story: https://archive.org/search.php?query=the+machine+stops&and[]=mediatype%3A%22audio%22 https://archive.org/search.php?query=the+machine+stops&and[]... and there is also an audiobook version you can find on Audible etc.
cameron_b 5y ago
I was hoping someone would repost this. Saw it a while back and couldn’t remember enough to search for it. Thanks
csours 5y ago
I re-read this earlier this year and it really holds up. The lectures shared worldwide is basically how I use YouTube.
runfaster2000 5y ago
Big fan of this book. It's incredibly forward-thinking and can be read in an evening. Absolutely recommended if you have not read it.
pram 5y ago
Classic, this is a story that will always stick with you. City of Ember is also thematically similar, it's a fun movie.
JasonFruit 5y ago
The Machine is a powerful metaphor for government: a human creation which we made to serve us, and to which we have granted power beyond the bound of wisdom. It has grown beyond our understanding and control, and it would allow us to die if it could persist without us. When we are no longer able to maintain its vastness, many will perish with it.
- titzer 5y ago
  The same thing could be said about the Internet, or tech in general.
  - bsanr 5y ago
    Any technology; society, language... But I think, at its heart, it's a general metaphor for overreliance, materially, physically, psychologically, philosophically, and so on. It's a little stilted, in that it takes the complete and whole human body to be the irreducible quantum of man's existence, which it isn't, in either direction: people live full and happy lives with missing limbs or cognitive shortcomings, and even the healthiest man will have grave and brutal difficulties living on his own for an extended period. "People" are made up of colonies of varying types of cells (both genetically related to the whole and not), and necessarily make up communities that only can continue to exist through symbiosis. I would take that the actualization of the individual (as many individuals as possible) is the crux around which everything else swings, but the murkiness of the state of our evolution through the cosmos makes it difficult to pass judgment at any juncture. Perhaps the Machine and its collapse is what allows for the Pearl Mist People to carry on humanity without the threat of full and total Venusification of the planet. I feel like there's an ancient Chinese parable about this...
- drc500free 5y ago
  I see The Machine is as a metaphor for the intermingling of Government, Family, Religion, Technology, and Business. Those systems are the only things powerful enough to keep the others in check, using each of their specific monopolies. When they stop competing, there is nothing left to prevent individual people from getting steamrolled.
pugworthy 5y ago
I like this occurrence of essentially modern FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out... “But why do you not come to me instead?” “Because I cannot leave this place.” “Why?” “Because, any moment, something tremendous many happen.”
dspillett 5y ago
There was an excellent production of this at York's (UK) Theatre some years ago. If you can find a recording (they released a performance on youtube during the pandemic though I don't know if that is still available, legitimately or otherwise) I recommend trying it. I went thinking “this isn't going to work on stage without major changes” but was pleasantly surprised.
PicassoCTs 5y ago
And all it took was one rogue nation torpedoing oil-rigs with autonomous drones?
dang 5y ago
Past related threads - mostly but not all about this story: The Machine Stops: Science and Its Limits - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26234104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26234104 - Feb 2021 (14 comments) Forster in Cambridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23960924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23960924 - July 2020 (2 comments) E. M. Forster, The Art of Fiction No. 1 (1953) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21264355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21264355 - Oct 2019 (1 comment) The Machine Stops (1909) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20461514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20461514 - July 2019 (17 comments) The Machine Stops (1909) Is an Omen for Our Technological Age - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19215311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19215311 - Feb 2019 (1 comment) The Machine Stops - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19125021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19125021 - Feb 2019 (3 comments) The Machine Stops - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19124608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19124608 - Feb 2019 (29 comments) What I Believe, by E.M. Forster (1938) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10874412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10874412 - Jan 2016 (4 comments) The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster (1909) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10490198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10490198 - Nov 2015 (17 comments) The Machine Stops - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9544256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9544256 - May 2015 (26 comments) The Machine Stops (1909) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637635 - April 2014 (24 comments) The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster (1909) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5041305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5041305 - Jan 2013 (1 comment) (This Day in Tech) Nov. 1, 1909: ‘The Machine Stops’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1856254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1856254 - Nov 2010 (1 comment) The Machine Stops : E.M. Forster - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1114384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1114384 - Feb 2010 (1 comment)
bsanr 5y ago
“The tunnels, of course, were lighted. Everything is light, artificial light; darkness is the exception. So when I saw a black gap in the tiles, I knew that it was an exception, and rejoiced. -Malcolm X, probably. (Please don't mistake my jauntiness for thoughtlessness.)
- bsanr 5y ago
  An addendum: 1909 would have been when Picasso was in his African Period, and 10 years after the publishing of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which both presaged French negrophilie and common early-century European attitudes towards Africans - specifically, as representing closer human proximity to nature and passion, and identifying black iconography (from manufactured works like sculpture and dance to the literal absence of light) with such. I wouldn't be surprised if Forster had encountered such sentiments and been influenced by them, for better or worse.
8bitsrule 5y ago
The Beeb made the story into an episode of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_the_Unknown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_the_Unknown] aired on Oct 6, 1966. Was once online somewhere (having no luck today.) Every time I hear of Machine Stops, I think of Bradbury story "There Will Come Soft Rains" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Will_Come_Soft_Rains_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Will_Come_Soft_Rains_(sh...] For me both of these fellas capture something of the H.G. Wells atmosphere, tinged with sadness.

This book started my love of Science Fiction. My English teacher gave it to me when I was about 13. I wasn't very focused in school, but I fell in love with this book. My teacher obviously knew me well, it was short, but very well written. Thank you teacher.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

samizdis 5y ago

It's interesting, to me, what prompted Forster to write this. From the "themes" section [1] of the Wikipedia page about the story: 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." In The Time Machine, Wells had pictured the childlike Eloi living the life of leisure of Greek gods whilst the working Morlocks lived underground and kept their whole idyllic existence going. In contrast to Wells' political commentary, Forster points to the technology itself as the ultimate controlling force. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops#Themes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops#Themes

MarkusWandel 5y ago

There are periodic waves of fear that the machine will, in fact, stop. The machine being an immeasurably complex global network of just-in-time delivery, high efficiency (but not necessarily sustainable) food production and so on. That once broken, this system may not be easily restarted, at least quickly enough to prevent disaster. Y2K and COVID being the most recent such waves. Probably this is why this old short story still resonates so strongly.

titzer 5y ago
A solar flare or a coronal mass ejection that hits Earth would be catastrophically bad.
Syonyk 5y ago
> That once broken, this system may not be easily restarted, at least quickly enough to prevent disaster. This is quite literally what we're seeing with currently supply chain shortages, food shortages, etc. The machine breaking down. It turns out, it cannot be easily stopped and restarted.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  So far so good? At least here in the West, other than a short panic of "We're going to run out of forests that they felled that we need to wipe shit from our asses!". But maybe things are falling apart in the background, with things like global shipping insanity, and food price hikes http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/ http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/ . But cable news is busy talking about the things cable news talk about.

jerf 5y ago

This piece was well ahead of its time. I don't think I can claim with a straight face that it could be written today without change, of course, but I am comfortable saying that if someone told me this was written in the 1960s that I would have a hard time proving them wrong. And that's not something most stories from 1909 can say. And the changes necessary to bring it up to date even today are not that great, honestly. For instance, "By her side, on the little reading-desk, was a survival from the ages of litter — one book. This was the Book of the Machine. In it were instructions against every possible contingency. If she was hot or cold or dyspeptic or at a loss for a word, she went to the book, and it told her which button to press. The Central Committee published it. In accordance with a growing habit, it was richly bound." would need some tweaking. Today we could be even lazier and simply ask for these things, in voice. But all in all, well ahead of its time.

jkestner 5y ago
In a world where old graphic manuals are reissued on Kickstarter and people buy hardcover books or vinyl just to have a beautiful functional object, what needs updating even there? I think it correctly notes that we tend to make new physical artifacts to retain experiences that have become disembodied and abstracted away from us.
- jerf 5y ago
  Actually, it was the "button press" that I think is out of date, for much the same reason the original Enterprise bridge looks very silly nowadays. We don't need huge arrays of buttons like that anymore. We may still want a few physical ones, of course, just as we like physical volume and climate controls in our cars, but our 21st century Machine rooms would not have hundreds of buttons in them, but a touchscreen and voice interface. Even if we had a physical manual for it, which I'm totally comfortable with as a story choice. You may have simply automatically upgraded the interface in your head, but I'm pretty sure the author was envisioning something more like the Enterprise bridge.
  - qayxc 5y ago

awezsdg 5y ago

FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS! FUCK MASKERS!

dotsam 5y ago

If you prefer to listen rather than read, there are free librivox recordings of this story: https://archive.org/search.php?query=the+machine+stops&and[]=mediatype%3A%22audio%22 https://archive.org/search.php?query=the+machine+stops&and[]... and there is also an audiobook version you can find on Audible etc.

cameron_b 5y ago

I was hoping someone would repost this. Saw it a while back and couldn’t remember enough to search for it. Thanks

csours 5y ago

I re-read this earlier this year and it really holds up. The lectures shared worldwide is basically how I use YouTube.

runfaster2000 5y ago

Big fan of this book. It's incredibly forward-thinking and can be read in an evening. Absolutely recommended if you have not read it.

pram 5y ago

Classic, this is a story that will always stick with you. City of Ember is also thematically similar, it's a fun movie.

JasonFruit 5y ago

The Machine is a powerful metaphor for government: a human creation which we made to serve us, and to which we have granted power beyond the bound of wisdom. It has grown beyond our understanding and control, and it would allow us to die if it could persist without us. When we are no longer able to maintain its vastness, many will perish with it.

titzer 5y ago
The same thing could be said about the Internet, or tech in general.
- bsanr 5y ago
  Any technology; society, language... But I think, at its heart, it's a general metaphor for overreliance, materially, physically, psychologically, philosophically, and so on. It's a little stilted, in that it takes the complete and whole human body to be the irreducible quantum of man's existence, which it isn't, in either direction: people live full and happy lives with missing limbs or cognitive shortcomings, and even the healthiest man will have grave and brutal difficulties living on his own for an extended period. "People" are made up of colonies of varying types of cells (both genetically related to the whole and not), and necessarily make up communities that only can continue to exist through symbiosis. I would take that the actualization of the individual (as many individuals as possible) is the crux around which everything else swings, but the murkiness of the state of our evolution through the cosmos makes it difficult to pass judgment at any juncture. Perhaps the Machine and its collapse is what allows for the Pearl Mist People to carry on humanity without the threat of full and total Venusification of the planet. I feel like there's an ancient Chinese parable about this...
drc500free 5y ago
I see The Machine is as a metaphor for the intermingling of Government, Family, Religion, Technology, and Business. Those systems are the only things powerful enough to keep the others in check, using each of their specific monopolies. When they stop competing, there is nothing left to prevent individual people from getting steamrolled.

pugworthy 5y ago

I like this occurrence of essentially modern FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out... “But why do you not come to me instead?” “Because I cannot leave this place.” “Why?” “Because, any moment, something tremendous many happen.”

dspillett 5y ago

There was an excellent production of this at York's (UK) Theatre some years ago. If you can find a recording (they released a performance on youtube during the pandemic though I don't know if that is still available, legitimately or otherwise) I recommend trying it. I went thinking “this isn't going to work on stage without major changes” but was pleasantly surprised.

PicassoCTs 5y ago

And all it took was one rogue nation torpedoing oil-rigs with autonomous drones?

dang 5y ago

Past related threads - mostly but not all about this story: The Machine Stops: Science and Its Limits - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26234104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26234104 - Feb 2021 (14 comments) Forster in Cambridge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23960924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23960924 - July 2020 (2 comments) E. M. Forster, The Art of Fiction No. 1 (1953) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21264355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21264355 - Oct 2019 (1 comment) The Machine Stops (1909) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20461514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20461514 - July 2019 (17 comments) The Machine Stops (1909) Is an Omen for Our Technological Age - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19215311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19215311 - Feb 2019 (1 comment) The Machine Stops - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19125021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19125021 - Feb 2019 (3 comments) The Machine Stops - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19124608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19124608 - Feb 2019 (29 comments) What I Believe, by E.M. Forster (1938) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10874412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10874412 - Jan 2016 (4 comments) The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster (1909) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10490198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10490198 - Nov 2015 (17 comments) The Machine Stops - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9544256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9544256 - May 2015 (26 comments) The Machine Stops (1909) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7637635 - April 2014 (24 comments) The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster (1909) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5041305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5041305 - Jan 2013 (1 comment) (This Day in Tech) Nov. 1, 1909: ‘The Machine Stops’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1856254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1856254 - Nov 2010 (1 comment) The Machine Stops : E.M. Forster - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1114384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1114384 - Feb 2010 (1 comment)

bsanr 5y ago

“The tunnels, of course, were lighted. Everything is light, artificial light; darkness is the exception. So when I saw a black gap in the tiles, I knew that it was an exception, and rejoiced. -Malcolm X, probably. (Please don't mistake my jauntiness for thoughtlessness.)

bsanr 5y ago
An addendum: 1909 would have been when Picasso was in his African Period, and 10 years after the publishing of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which both presaged French negrophilie and common early-century European attitudes towards Africans - specifically, as representing closer human proximity to nature and passion, and identifying black iconography (from manufactured works like sculpture and dance to the literal absence of light) with such. I wouldn't be surprised if Forster had encountered such sentiments and been influenced by them, for better or worse.

8bitsrule 5y ago

The Beeb made the story into an episode of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_the_Unknown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_the_Unknown] aired on Oct 6, 1966. Was once online somewhere (having no luck today.) Every time I hear of Machine Stops, I think of Bradbury story "There Will Come Soft Rains" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Will_Come_Soft_Rains_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Will_Come_Soft_Rains_(sh...] For me both of these fellas capture something of the H.G. Wells atmosphere, tinged with sadness.