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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
Really loved some elements, overall interesting enough. Definitely interesting ideas to think about considering it was written in 1909.
The Machine Stops (novelette) – 3 stars. It must be noted that this was written in 1909, and thus must be commended for basically predicting the internet. It was also a fairly effective examination of a theme. More plot in this world would have been nice. The world-building was generally immersive, though it should have gone a little further, and in particular the conclusion should have been better explained.
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
literally predicted zoom and made me cry. It's beautiful that kuno, someone who grew up underground surrounded by the machine, represents our humanity and humans' curiosities about the unknown. the effects of the machine couldn’t stomp it out entirely.
“I have seen them, spoken to them, loved them. They are hiding in the mist and the ferns until our civilization stops.”
“I have seen them, spoken to them, loved them. They are hiding in the mist and the ferns until our civilization stops.”
3,5 csillag
A helyzet az, hogy Forster munkásságát egyáltalán nem ismerem, és ez a novella nem tipikus képviselője az életművének. A wikipedia tanúsága szerint legismertebb művei az Egyesült Királyság és Írország társadalmát mutatják be, leginkább az irónia eszközével. A The Machine Stops pedig egy sci-fi, amiben nem annyira véltem felfedezni az előbb említett vonalat, bár az iróniát mégis csak. LibriVoxon hallgattam ezt is, és a tervem az, hogy a jövőben megismétlem, valamiféle írott példánnyal kísérve, mert biztos vagyok benne, hogy sok minden felett elsiklottam (főleg, hogy volt, amikor belealudtam este, és bár elvileg újrahallgattam azt a részt, de mégis…). Ami első olvasásra átjött és megmaradt: ez a történet a gép-ember viszonyt mutatja be, egy olyan világot, ahol mindenki a saját kis buborékában él, mindent a gépen keresztül, gyakorlatilag online formában csinál. Bár a megvalósítás egy tényleges gépet jelent itt, remekül sarkítja igazából a 21. század digitális társadalmát, sok mindenben már most is tükröt tart, még ha kicsit görbét is. Igazán nem hosszú, és nagyon érzékletes. Nem véletlenül klasszikus ez is. Örülök, hogy a LibriVoxon bóklászva rátaláltam.
A helyzet az, hogy Forster munkásságát egyáltalán nem ismerem, és ez a novella nem tipikus képviselője az életművének. A wikipedia tanúsága szerint legismertebb művei az Egyesült Királyság és Írország társadalmát mutatják be, leginkább az irónia eszközével. A The Machine Stops pedig egy sci-fi, amiben nem annyira véltem felfedezni az előbb említett vonalat, bár az iróniát mégis csak. LibriVoxon hallgattam ezt is, és a tervem az, hogy a jövőben megismétlem, valamiféle írott példánnyal kísérve, mert biztos vagyok benne, hogy sok minden felett elsiklottam (főleg, hogy volt, amikor belealudtam este, és bár elvileg újrahallgattam azt a részt, de mégis…). Ami első olvasásra átjött és megmaradt: ez a történet a gép-ember viszonyt mutatja be, egy olyan világot, ahol mindenki a saját kis buborékában él, mindent a gépen keresztül, gyakorlatilag online formában csinál. Bár a megvalósítás egy tényleges gépet jelent itt, remekül sarkítja igazából a 21. század digitális társadalmát, sok mindenben már most is tükröt tart, még ha kicsit görbét is. Igazán nem hosszú, és nagyon érzékletes. Nem véletlenül klasszikus ez is. Örülök, hogy a LibriVoxon bóklászva rátaláltam.
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The first story in this book was a good dystopian story with an interesting concept that was dark and sinister at times. It wasn't particularly gripping though.
The second story was weird, random and confusing, but the resolution was satisfying.
The second story was weird, random and confusing, but the resolution was satisfying.
This review does not contain the word dystopia.
“Night and day, wind and storm, tide and earthquake, impeded man no longer. He had harnessed Leviathan”.
The Machine Stops pictures a future in which humanity has abandoned the surface of the Earth, grown unable to breath the atmosphere, and moved underground in the so-called Machine: a planetary system of individual cells, each cell hosting a single human being and providing to his/her every need: light, food, sleep, water, literature and music, and most peculiarly the possibility of communicating with every other cell in the planet, via video-conference. Work in the age of the Machine has therefore disappeared, save for a few exceptions, and people spend their life ‘spiritually’, in the pursuance and discussion of ‘ideas’: which however are often only second-hand, since direct experience has come to be considered unfit, and people seldom if ever leave their cells. Human contact is accordingly nearly non-existent, save through the Machine’s speaking apparatus.
It is by the speaking apparatus that, as the story opens, Vashti is contacted by her son Kuno—only to be asked to visit his cell, half the world away (from Sumatra to Wessex in England). Vashti strongly opposes the prospect, since travelling is now disliked even though permitted, but eventually agrees, for Kuno’s cryptic remarks (which he refuses to explain “through the wearisome Machine”) have upset her. Once there Vashti learns that Kuno has been on the surface, and without an official Egression-permit to boot, and once caught has consequently been threatened with Homelessness: expulsion from his cell and exposure to the surface air, now deathly to humans. Vashti is horrified by her son’s ‘unmechanical’ behaviour and even more by his beliefs, and resolves never to see him again.
What Kuno does “is contrary to the spirit of the age”. He yearns for first-person experience, and his escape is exemplary. As he ascends towards the surface he feels he’s getting beyond the influence of the Machine: “Man is the measure. That was my first lesson”, he says. During his brief visit aboveground he regains a sense of place and of belonging: “I have seen the hills of Wessex as Ælfrid saw them when he overthrew the Danes”. His description of the constellation of Orion as a man with a belt and a sword is perhaps akin to the earliest first-hand ‘ideas’ that ever occurred to mankind. When he is finally caught and returned to his cell, he describes this as being dragged back into hell. Step by step, Kuno is freeing himself from psychological deference to the Machine. “I felt, for the first time, that a protest had been lodged against corruption, and that even as the dead were comforting me, so I was comforting the unborn. I felt that humanity existed, and that it existed without clothes. How can I possibly explain this? It was naked, humanity seemed naked, and all these tubes and buttons and machineries neither came into the world with us, nor will they follow us out, nor do they matter supremely while we are here”. Such behaviour is simply unacceptable, and Vashti feels her son is doomed. “On atavism the Machine can have no mercy”.
The Machine is perfect, hence totalitarian. Both eugenetics and euthanasia are regularly practiced, and so is the death penalty. There is one single, chilling reference in the text to a previous Great Rebellion, after which an unspecified number of people were simply left on the surface to die. Besides, the Machine actually isn’t perfect: people are instead constantly forced to adjust to the standardised quality of life, and do so only because they have given up all hopes and thoughts of improvement. The Machine is absolute, definitive, and mankind has begun to evolve around it: they are now short, “white as fungus”, and their muscles are nearly powerless from lack of exercise. In the years following Vashti’s visit to Kuno, a sort of religion develops around the Machine, curiously reminiscent of certain elements of Christianity (persecutions included). People now hold the Machine to be omnipotent and eternal.
But over time malfunctions begin to appear and to accumulate, as the knowledge of how to repair them has been lost. The man-made Machine falls into decay, inevitably. And the day will come, when the Machine stops.
Originally published in 1909 and reviewed by the author in 1928 (which is why this edition has the later copyright) The Machine Stops anticipated television, videoconferencing, and Matrix by several decades. And the internet. The Machine is more totalitarian than later, more famous visionary constructs, such as Orwell’s IngSoc, and resistance to it is a striking ancestor to the concept of ‘crimethink’. Stylistically, Forster’s prose is a wonderful instrument, capable of great precision as well as of sudden poetical openings: “Above her, beneath her, and around her, the Machine hummed eternally; she did not notice the noise, for she had been born with it in her ears. The earth, carrying her, hummed as it sped through silence, turning her now to the invisible sun, now to the invisible stars”.
The 1909 text
http://www.plexus.org/forster/index.html
On the public domain and available for free; though it lacks the final 3-odd pages of the 1928 revised version, which add a whole new dimension to the meaning of the story.
“Night and day, wind and storm, tide and earthquake, impeded man no longer. He had harnessed Leviathan”.
The Machine Stops pictures a future in which humanity has abandoned the surface of the Earth, grown unable to breath the atmosphere, and moved underground in the so-called Machine: a planetary system of individual cells, each cell hosting a single human being and providing to his/her every need: light, food, sleep, water, literature and music, and most peculiarly the possibility of communicating with every other cell in the planet, via video-conference. Work in the age of the Machine has therefore disappeared, save for a few exceptions, and people spend their life ‘spiritually’, in the pursuance and discussion of ‘ideas’: which however are often only second-hand, since direct experience has come to be considered unfit, and people seldom if ever leave their cells. Human contact is accordingly nearly non-existent, save through the Machine’s speaking apparatus.
It is by the speaking apparatus that, as the story opens, Vashti is contacted by her son Kuno—only to be asked to visit his cell, half the world away (from Sumatra to Wessex in England). Vashti strongly opposes the prospect, since travelling is now disliked even though permitted, but eventually agrees, for Kuno’s cryptic remarks (which he refuses to explain “through the wearisome Machine”) have upset her. Once there Vashti learns that Kuno has been on the surface, and without an official Egression-permit to boot, and once caught has consequently been threatened with Homelessness: expulsion from his cell and exposure to the surface air, now deathly to humans. Vashti is horrified by her son’s ‘unmechanical’ behaviour and even more by his beliefs, and resolves never to see him again.
What Kuno does “is contrary to the spirit of the age”. He yearns for first-person experience, and his escape is exemplary. As he ascends towards the surface he feels he’s getting beyond the influence of the Machine: “Man is the measure. That was my first lesson”, he says. During his brief visit aboveground he regains a sense of place and of belonging: “I have seen the hills of Wessex as Ælfrid saw them when he overthrew the Danes”. His description of the constellation of Orion as a man with a belt and a sword is perhaps akin to the earliest first-hand ‘ideas’ that ever occurred to mankind. When he is finally caught and returned to his cell, he describes this as being dragged back into hell. Step by step, Kuno is freeing himself from psychological deference to the Machine. “I felt, for the first time, that a protest had been lodged against corruption, and that even as the dead were comforting me, so I was comforting the unborn. I felt that humanity existed, and that it existed without clothes. How can I possibly explain this? It was naked, humanity seemed naked, and all these tubes and buttons and machineries neither came into the world with us, nor will they follow us out, nor do they matter supremely while we are here”. Such behaviour is simply unacceptable, and Vashti feels her son is doomed. “On atavism the Machine can have no mercy”.
The Machine is perfect, hence totalitarian. Both eugenetics and euthanasia are regularly practiced, and so is the death penalty. There is one single, chilling reference in the text to a previous Great Rebellion, after which an unspecified number of people were simply left on the surface to die. Besides, the Machine actually isn’t perfect: people are instead constantly forced to adjust to the standardised quality of life, and do so only because they have given up all hopes and thoughts of improvement. The Machine is absolute, definitive, and mankind has begun to evolve around it: they are now short, “white as fungus”, and their muscles are nearly powerless from lack of exercise. In the years following Vashti’s visit to Kuno, a sort of religion develops around the Machine, curiously reminiscent of certain elements of Christianity (persecutions included). People now hold the Machine to be omnipotent and eternal.
But over time malfunctions begin to appear and to accumulate, as the knowledge of how to repair them has been lost. The man-made Machine falls into decay, inevitably. And the day will come, when the Machine stops.
Originally published in 1909 and reviewed by the author in 1928 (which is why this edition has the later copyright) The Machine Stops anticipated television, videoconferencing, and Matrix by several decades. And the internet. The Machine is more totalitarian than later, more famous visionary constructs, such as Orwell’s IngSoc, and resistance to it is a striking ancestor to the concept of ‘crimethink’. Stylistically, Forster’s prose is a wonderful instrument, capable of great precision as well as of sudden poetical openings: “Above her, beneath her, and around her, the Machine hummed eternally; she did not notice the noise, for she had been born with it in her ears. The earth, carrying her, hummed as it sped through silence, turning her now to the invisible sun, now to the invisible stars”.
The 1909 text
http://www.plexus.org/forster/index.html
On the public domain and available for free; though it lacks the final 3-odd pages of the 1928 revised version, which add a whole new dimension to the meaning of the story.