Below are some important passages that make the short story an important work of science fiction. You probably already notice comparisons that you can make among other texts we’ve read, and, you’ll probably make future connections to the readings to come.
E. M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” (1909)
- p. 53: “the Machine did not transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea of people….Something ‘good enough’ had long since been accepted by our race.”
- p. 56: “she had studied the civilization that had immediately preceded her own–the civilization that had mistaken the functions of the system, and had used it for bringing people to things, instead of for bringing things to people. Those funny old days, when men went for change of air instead of changing the air in their rooms!”
- p. 57: “…horror of direct experience…”
- p. 70: “First-hand ideas do not really exist….Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element–direct observation.”
- p. 59: the human touch as barbaric
- p. 62: Bizarre take on eugenics–“these days it was a demerit to be muscular. Each infant was examined at birth, and all who promised undue strength were destroyed.”
- p. 67: The Machine “robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralyzed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it.”
- p. 71: “To attribute these two great developments [abolition of respirators and reestablishment of religion] to the Central Committee, is to take a very narrow view of civilization. The Central Committee announced the developments, it is true, but they were no more the cause of them than were the kings of the imperialistic period the cause of war. Rather did they yield to some invincible pressure, which came no one knew whither, and which, when gratified, was succeeded by some new pressure equally invincible. To such a state of affairs it is convenient to give the name of progress. No one confessed the Machine was out of hand.”
- p. 77: “man who had once made god in his image, and had mirrored his strength on the constellations, beautiful naked man was dying, strangled in the garments that he had woven. Century after century had he toiled, and here was his reward.”