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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
dark
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
What a fabulous story! It's all in the telling - the descriptive writing is wonderful. Basically, man has created a machine to fulfil all his wants, and has now handed over control of life to the machine. People sit in their individual rooms, never physically meeting other humans. All their needs are catered for at the touch of a button, and they communicate constantly with their thousands of friends through the machine in short bursts, increasingly irritated by the interruptions of people contacting them, but still responding to those interruptions. Sounds horrifyingly familiar, huh?
But one man dreams of a time when mankind walked freely on the surface of the earth and gazed at the heavens. He sees that the machine is no longer the servant of the people and has become instead their master. And he foresees that one day the machine may stop...
A warning from the past to us in the present of where we may easily end up in the not too distant future. Full of some disturbing images, a little bit of horror and a tiny bit of hope - a masterpiece of short story writing. Turn off your computer, sign out of Facebook, stop watching cat videos on youtube, yes, even switch off your smartphone for an hour if you still can... and read a story that will make you just a little reluctant to switch them all back on. Then go out and look at the stars...
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
But one man dreams of a time when mankind walked freely on the surface of the earth and gazed at the heavens. He sees that the machine is no longer the servant of the people and has become instead their master. And he foresees that one day the machine may stop...
A warning from the past to us in the present of where we may easily end up in the not too distant future. Full of some disturbing images, a little bit of horror and a tiny bit of hope - a masterpiece of short story writing. Turn off your computer, sign out of Facebook, stop watching cat videos on youtube, yes, even switch off your smartphone for an hour if you still can... and read a story that will make you just a little reluctant to switch them all back on. Then go out and look at the stars...
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
challenging
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
inspiring
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
For a short story about technology written over a hundred years ago, this hits way too close to home.
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Excellent commentary on the modern condition, written before any of it was concieved. Don't create the torment nexus, indeed.
dark
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
medium-paced
A 1909 science fiction novelette by an author who is much better known for A Room with a View and other non-SF titles. Although this seems to be an outlier in the E. M. Forster canon, it is an impressive piece of futuristic forethought.
In the world of The Machine Stops, humanity lives in massive apartment complexes underground, where they can control the atmosphere and shield themselves from the inhospitable air above ground. People appear to value a certain kind of purity very highly - namely, the purity of a self that is unpolluted by contact with the world outside one's apartment.
One marvels at the prophetic prowess that this short work seems to possess. Many aspects of the world Forster imagines here really do invoke the information-age society. You can draw parallels between The Machine Stops and the pseudo-socialization of social media, zoom fatigue, the potential pitfalls of working from home, being removed from the reality of fighting for survival, international air travel, and more.
Here's the part of the novelette that spoke to me the most. Forster's humanity loves to find and acquire new ideas - and not just any ideas, but "second-hand", or better yet, "tenth-hand" ideas. You don't want to learn about the French Revolution and form your own ideas based on primary sources. Instead, you want to learn what experts say about the event - or rather, what judgements later commentators have to proclaim over the historians' analysis. Layers and layers of the analyses of previous analyses build up, and in the meantime the reality of what actually happened in France during the Revolution is dissolved by a game of broken telephone.
There's an undercurrent of authoritarianism in this society - Forster invokes religion, which apparently is both dead and very much alive in this future world. This is where the novelette's weaknesses start to come out. Because Forster packs a lot into a very short space, The Machine Stops reads more like an outline for a novel than a piece that stands on its own two legs.
Perhaps because of the limited space, I didn't feel immersed in the world of Forster's imagination. Instead, it felt like a list of genuinely impressive ideas that were glued together with dialogue. As Paul Hollywood once said, the flavors are good, but it's underbaked.
In the world of The Machine Stops, humanity lives in massive apartment complexes underground, where they can control the atmosphere and shield themselves from the inhospitable air above ground. People appear to value a certain kind of purity very highly - namely, the purity of a self that is unpolluted by contact with the world outside one's apartment.
One marvels at the prophetic prowess that this short work seems to possess. Many aspects of the world Forster imagines here really do invoke the information-age society. You can draw parallels between The Machine Stops and the pseudo-socialization of social media, zoom fatigue, the potential pitfalls of working from home, being removed from the reality of fighting for survival, international air travel, and more.
Here's the part of the novelette that spoke to me the most. Forster's humanity loves to find and acquire new ideas - and not just any ideas, but "second-hand", or better yet, "tenth-hand" ideas. You don't want to learn about the French Revolution and form your own ideas based on primary sources. Instead, you want to learn what experts say about the event - or rather, what judgements later commentators have to proclaim over the historians' analysis. Layers and layers of the analyses of previous analyses build up, and in the meantime the reality of what actually happened in France during the Revolution is dissolved by a game of broken telephone.
There's an undercurrent of authoritarianism in this society - Forster invokes religion, which apparently is both dead and very much alive in this future world. This is where the novelette's weaknesses start to come out. Because Forster packs a lot into a very short space, The Machine Stops reads more like an outline for a novel than a piece that stands on its own two legs.
Perhaps because of the limited space, I didn't feel immersed in the world of Forster's imagination. Instead, it felt like a list of genuinely impressive ideas that were glued together with dialogue. As Paul Hollywood once said, the flavors are good, but it's underbaked.