The Machine Stops

Short story by E. M. Forster

"The Machine Stops" is a science fiction short story by E. M. Forster. After initial
publication in The Oxford and Cambridge Review (November 1909), the story was
republished in Forster's The Eternal Moment and Other Stories in 1928. After being voted
one of the best novellas up to 1965, it was included that same year in the populist anthology
Modern Short Stories. In 1973 it was also included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame,
Volume Two.
The story, set in a world where humanity lives underground and relies on a giant
machine to provide its needs, predicted technologies similar to instant messaging and the
Internet.
Plot summary
The story describes a world in which most of the human population has lost the ability
to live on the surface of the Earth. Each individual now lives in isolation below ground in a
standard room, with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine.
Travel is permitted, but is unpopular and rarely necessary. Communication is made via a kind
of instant messaging/video conferencing machine with which people conduct their only
activity: the sharing of ideas and what passes for knowledge.
The two main characters, Vashti and her son Kuno, live on opposite sides of the
world. Vashti is content with her life, which, like most inhabitants of the world, she spends
producing and endlessly discussing secondhand 'ideas'. Her son Kuno, however, is a
sensualist and a rebel. He persuades a reluctant Vashti to endure the journey (and the resultant
unwelcome personal interaction) to his room. There, he tells her of his disenchantment with
the sanitised, mechanical world.
He confides to her that he has visited the surface of the Earth without permission and
that he saw other humans living outside the world of the Machine. However, the Machine
recaptures him, and he is threatened with 'Homelessness': expulsion from the underground
environment and presumed death. Vashti, however, dismisses her son's concerns as dangerous
madness and returns to her part of the world.
As time passes, and Vashti continues the routine of her daily life, there are two
important developments. First, individuals are no longer permitted use of the respirators
which are needed to visit the earth's surface. Most welcome this development, as they are
skeptical and fearful of first-hand experience and of those who desire it. Secondly,
"Technopoly", a kind of religion, is established in which the Machine is the object of
worship. 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
threatened with Homelessness. The Mending Apparatus—the system charged with repairing
defects that appear in the Machine proper—has also failed by this time, but concerns about
this are dismissed in the context of the supposed omnipotence of the Machine itself.
 During this time, Kuno is transferred to a room near Vashti's. He comes to believe that
the Machine is breaking down, and tells her cryptically "The Machine stops." Vashti
continues with her life, but eventually defects begin to appear in the Machine. At first,
humans accept the deteriorations as the whim of the Machine, to which they are now wholly
subservient, but the situation continues to deteriorate as the knowledge of how to repair the
Machine has been lost.
Finally, the Machine collapses, bringing 'civilisation' down with it. Kuno comes to
Vashti's ruined room. Before they both perish, they realise that humanity and its connection to
the natural world are what truly matters, and that it will fall to the surface-dwellers who still
exist to rebuild the human race and to prevent the mistake of the Machine from being
repeated.
Themes
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.

A Summary and Analysis of E. M. Forster’s ‘The Machine Stops’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Machine Stops’ (1909) is probably E. M. Forster’s best-known short story. The
story’s influence can arguably be seen on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Ray
Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror.
Like many other dystopian stories, Forster’s has gone on to influence popular culture
in numerous fields (the pop group Level 42 even wrote a song about it) and it has been
pronounced one of the best-ever science-fiction stories on several occasions. Forster himself
wrote ‘The Machine Stops’ as a response to one of H. G. Wells’s utopian novels (probably A
Modern Utopia, published in 1905).
Forster responded by offering a dystopian vision of mankind’s future, a bleak analysis
of our over-reliance upon, and eventual subordination to, modern technology. You can read
the story here before proceeding to our summary and analysis below; you can also get hold of
other Forster stories by investing in the excellent edition of his short fiction, Collected Short
Stories (Twentieth Century Classics S.).
‘The Machine Stops’: summary
First, a brief summary of the plot of ‘The Machine Stops’. In the future, mankind
dwells underground where they rely on the Machine for all their needs. Everyone owns a
book, referred to as ‘the Book’, which is not a bible but rather a sort of instruction manual
telling people about the Machine.
The narrator tells us that the ‘clumsy business of public gatherings had been long
since abandoned’. People stay in their own rooms, under the ground, and interact via
technology – living a virtual rather than face-to-face existence in both their education and
socialising. People ‘isolate themselves’ when they go to sleep, unplugging themselves from
this technological world of telecommunication.
A mother and lecturer, Vashti, who lives in the southern hemisphere, talks to her son
Kuno, who is in the northern hemisphere, via a round plate which functions as a sort of
videophone. Kuno wants his mother to come and visit him where he lives in the northern
hemisphere, as he wishes to experience the stars, not from an airship, but while standing on
the surface of the earth and directly exposed to them. However, Vasthi vacillates and initially
refuses to go to see him, as she is reluctant to leave her room.
Eventually, Vashti gives in and arranges to go and visit her son, and makes the journey
via an airship. We are told that few people travel anywhere these days, because everywhere
on the planet is virtually identical to everywhere else. Airships have been preserved from a
former age when people used to travel to visit things, whereas now everything is brought to
them in their rooms.
Vashti’s journey reminds her of her ‘horror of direct experience’: leaving her bubble
or cocoon, the safety and familiarity of her room, and going out and being among other
people causes her to become anxious.
When she arrives, Kuno tells her why he insisted on her travelling to see him: because
he has something to tell her which he couldn’t tell her through the Machine. He is being
threatened with ‘Homelessness’ (a euphemism which means death, since nobody can survive
outside of the Machine) for daring to make his way out onto the surface of the Earth by
himself, demonstrating personal agency and independence.
People are allowed up to the surface, but only under supervised and permitted
conditions. Kuno has gone rogue by venturing out there by himself.
Kuno chastises his mother for worshipping the Machine, and they argue. He tells her
about how he discovered that his room is located below Wessex, in south-west England, and
that he climbed up onto the earth and saw the hills as the Anglo-Saxons had seen them in the
long-forgotten past. He had reconnected with nature and with the land, land which he had
only been able to experience as history, through lectures, before. He learned that there are
people who live outside of the Machine’s control.
However, mysterious ‘worms’ pursued him and ensnared him, bringing him back
underground and back to the Machine. Knocked unconscious, he woke up to find himself
back in his room.
Vashti returns home, thinking her son mad. In the ensuing years, respirators – which
allow people to safely visit the surface of the earth – are abolished, with leading academics
calling ‘first-hand ideas’ a mirage, since it is better to get information about the surface of the
earth safely from ‘gramophone’ recordings or what Forster calls the ‘cinematophote’ (i.e.,
film recordings or moving pictures). Second-hand or even tenth-hand ideas are better than
direct experience, these lecturers argue.
Another development that takes place is the re-establishment of religion, with the
Machine being worshipped as a god. Vashti herself has lost all sense of the meaning of life:
delivering a bad lecture is enough for her to long for euthanasia.
 Vashti loses all contact with her son, until she receives a message from him one day.
He has been transferred to the southern hemisphere, to a room close to her own, as a result of
his transgressions. He utters to her the cryptic words ‘the Machine stops’, arguing that the
Machine – on which everyone is now wholly dependent – is slowing down and grinding to a
halt.
But when Vashti does complain to the Committee of the Mending Apparatus, having
perceived that the music she teaches is ‘imperfect’ as the Machine provides her with it, she is
fobbed off and merely told that her complaint will be ‘forwarded in its turn’. Others receive
the same answer when they file a complaint.
Eventually, just as the population had accepted ‘good enough’ as an acceptable
standard for everything in their lives, people come to accept these flaws (such as smelly bath
water, imperfect poetry, and sullied music recordings) as part and parcel of their lives.
Forster’s narrator tells us that the event which triggered the ‘collapse of humanity’,
however, was when people’s beds failed to materialise in their rooms when they were
summoned. From there, everything gets worse, with lecturers reassuring everyone that things
are sufficient and the population should just carry on without sleep or clean air or light.
Eventually, as things descend further, there is, Forster’s narrator tells us, ‘hysterical
talk’ of ‘measures’ and ‘provisional dictatorship’. Then the whole communication system
shuts down.
People panic and pray in their desperation to the Machine, but it’s no good: man, the
narrator tells us, is ‘dying in the garments that he had woven’. Vashti finds Kuno, who, like
her, is dying, but before they join the legions of the dead, Kuno tells Vashti that he has seen
and lived among those who survive above-ground – the so-called Homeless – and that,
although he and his mother will perish, the human race will survive, having learnt its lesson.
‘The Machine Stops’: analysis
In his entertaining if often partisan Trillion Year Spree: History of Science Fiction,
Brian Aldiss has very few words of analysis to offer about ‘The Machine Stops’, despite the
fact that Forster’s short story foreshadowed and even directly influenced later authors of
dystopian fiction. Aldiss calls Forster’s story ‘overpraised’ and dislikes the ‘moralising’ tone
of Forster’s narrative.
This is unfair. ‘The Machine Stops’ deserves to be read, studied, and analysed
alongside Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four as one of the most powerful, as well
as one of the most prescience, early works of twentieth-century speculative fiction. Indeed,
who can read ‘The Machine Stops’ after lockdowns, Zoom and Teams meetings and lessons,
and dislike of close contact with other human beings became part of everyone’s everyday life,
and not think that Forster was a seer?
In 2019, his story looked like what he doubtless intended it to be: a fantastical piece
of speculation about where our relationship with technology might take us. Reading the story
in 2020 or afterwards, and it looks like a manual for the much-touted and chillingly dystopian
‘new normal’.
 On the face of it, it’s surprising to find the author of Howards End and A Passage to
India writing a dystopian short story. And yet when we consider Forster’s distaste for the
modern in Howards End, and especially his dislike of modern technology, ‘The Machine
Stops’ makes more sense as a typically ‘Forsterian’ production.
In his diary in January 1908, the year before the story was published, Forster wrote
that, rather than freeing us, science was enslaving us, especially new ‘machines’. It’s clear
that Forster was, at the very least, a technosceptic, if not also perhaps a full-on technophobe.
We should view ‘The Machine Stops’ as Forster’s imagining of a nightmare future in
which this ‘prospect’ is realised. The story also anticipated some later technological
inventions, such as instant messaging and video conferencing. As the narrator says early on in
the story, the human race had accepted ‘good enough’ as a high enough standard for
everything they experienced.
But as Kuno makes clear to his mother, seeing her on a plate and hearing her via a
telephone-type device is not fully seeing or hearing her. When Vashti gives her lecture on
Australian music, we are told that her audience can see and hear her ‘fairly well’, i.e. well
enough, but not perfectly. Nothing can quite recapture the experience of face-to-face
interaction.
We learn that in the futuristic world of ‘The Machine Stops’, a parent’s duty is
considered finished at the moment of birth: once Vashti had given birth to Kuno, he was
taken from her and thereafter they only visited each other intermittently, until he was
assigned a room on the other side of the earth. Now they mostly interact via the video plates.
It’s an idea that J. G. Ballard would later build on and take even further, where in his
1977 story ‘The Intensive Care Unit’ the narrator has done everything remotely since birth:
even get married and have children, without ever once having been in the same room as his
wife.
Human contact, too, has become something to be viewed with suspicion and even
fear. At one point, when Vashti is on board the airship, she almost falls, but it’s only thanks to
an attendant reaching out and catching her that she is saved. However, rather than being
grateful to the woman for preventing a nasty fall, she is angry with her for behaving so
‘barbarically’: human decency has come to be viewed as barbarism. The ‘custom’ of people
touching one another, the narrator tells us, had become obsolete.
Indeed, even when Vashti arrives at Kuno’s room having undertaken her journey
across the world to see him, she can see no point to having travelled all that way. She is ‘too
well-bred’ to shake his hand: she has been conditioned to view close contact even between
mother and son as undesirable.
Any dystopian fiction stands or falls by the plausibility of the world it creates or
projects. The world that Forster depicts in ‘The Machine Stops’ is intriguing for a number of
reasons, even if some of his technological predictions would quickly grow outdated (airships
were indeed considered the future of long-distance travel in 1908, but that was before the rise
of the aeroplane and a number of high-profile disasters involving airships in the 1930s).
But other details are more chilling. Children are destroyed at birth if they are deemed
too strong – a sort of inversion of the ‘survival of the fittest’ notion underpinning Darwinian
evolution, because a weak population will be easier for ‘the Machine’ to control and keep
docile. And how would someone who longed to be out and about exercising – indeed,
someone who lived for such things – cope with being cooped up inside their room all day,
every day?
Athletes would yearn to explore, to climb trees and mountains; what’s more, a strong
person might be tempted to use his or her strength to rebel against the Machine, which wants
people to be kept weak and passive. Of course, in a sense, as Forster’s narrator acknowledges,
destroying overly strong children at birth is Darwinian, since humans need to adapt to their
surroundings, and technology has dictated the surroundings in which humans will live, rather
than humans dictating how technology can best serve them.
Kuno is dangerous, of course, not just because his physical strength is above-average
(although that helps him to get himself out into the open so he can recover a sense of ‘space’,
of concepts such as ‘near’ and ‘far’) but because he is mentally strong, too: independent,
questioning, curious.
But even he has to break himself out of the social and psychological conditioning
which he has been subjected to all his life. When he walks along the railway tracks, his fear is
not the risk of electrocution on the live rails, but his knowledge that he is doing something
that is contrary to the will of the Machine.
Vashti’s behaviour is driven not by personal preference or anxiety, but by the ideology
under which she has lived all her life, too: viewing physical contact with distrust, and other
people as an unpredictable hazard. Even her own son she regards with pity but also with
‘disgust’.
Critics often remark that, in ‘The Machine Stops’, Forster foretold how our
problematic relationship with technology would develop; but what most analysis of the story
misses is the extent to which he also foresaw the modern obsession with ‘safetyism’, with
avoiding risk, even of a relatively mild kind, in favour of accepting mere existence over
living as such. Individuality, human touch, face-to-face interaction, are all viewed as not only
alien but actively harmful.
Kuno remarks, as he lies dying with his mother, that humankind has learnt its lesson.
But have we? Or, in the century or so since Forster wrote ‘The Machine Stops’, have we
already become so conditioned to, and reliant on, a life governed by technology that we are
incapable of learning that lesson?

The Machine Stops: Science and Its Limits

February 22, 2021 • By Henry M. Cowles

“IMAGINE, IF YOU CAN, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee.”
So begins a story by E. M. Forster from over a century ago, about a future that feels
uncannily like our present. Called “The Machine Stops,” the story conjures a world of
individual humans isolated in such rooms who pass the time by streaming lectures and
videoconferencing as the titular Machine tends to their every need. It is a world in which
everything — music, food, even your bed — is summoned by the click of a button. In place
of work, the Machine offers material and intellectual sustenance. For the story’s main
character, Vashti, it turns life into a reassuringly predictable cycle: “[S]he made the room dark
and slept; she awoke and made the room light; she ate and exchanged ideas with her friends,
and listened to music and attended lectures; she made the room dark and slept. Above her,
beneath her, and around her, the Machine hummed eternally.” To Vashti, the Machine offers
serenity and certainty in equal measure. In this imagined world of isolated togetherness,
heaven is a place.
Until it isn’t. Cracks appear, first as heresies whispered by Vashti’s son Kuno — in
person, since they cannot be shared through the Machine. “Cannot you see,” he asks, “that it
is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We
created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now.” Gradually, the
cracks widen: in place of music, jarring noises echo; at night, beds fail to appear. Eventually,
Kuno delivers a cryptic prophecy: “The Machine stops.” At first, Vashti finds this
unintelligible. The Machine, omnipresent and omniscient, is reality, if not God. Units of its
currency — ideas — are disseminated via lecture and shared via chat; like cryptocurrencies,
their value is relational rather than a proxy for some relationship to reality. So when the
Machine stops, proving Kuno right, it is not just the loss of material comfort that horrifies
Vashti and the others. It is the loss of meaning, even of truth, as the ideas stop circulating.
If this feels too close to home, you’re not alone. Forster’s eerie prescience isn’t even
new. Readers were returning to “The Machine Stops” long before COVID-19 and Zoom
turned so many of us into supine hermits binging media pre-selected by artificial intelligence.
What’s the best analogue for the Machine in today’s world? Some say the internet, others say
social media or digital surveillance. Each captures the uncomprehending dependence at the
center of Forster’s story. But these analogies ultimately fail: each of today’s technologies is
criticized, whereas Forster’s Machine never was — until Kuno. Our equivalent must be
beyond reproach, at least in polite company; it must shape daily life via hidden processes
shrouded in myth. Where is our Machine hiding?

The Machine Stops Summary

In a future human society, everyone lives in separate, underground rooms, where all
their needs and wants are provided by “the Machine.” One day, a woman, Vashti, receives a
call from her son Kuno asking her to visit him in person. She doesn’t see the point of visiting
him, since they can communicate just as easily through the Machine. Kuno wants to visit the
earth’s surface (which is now apparently incapable of supporting life), a desire that Vashti,
who is perfectly content living underground with the aid of the Machine, doesn’t understand.
Kuno criticizes Vashti for worshipping the Machine as if it were a divine being. Later, Kuno
tells Vashti that he will not talk to her anymore until she comes to visit him. She reluctantly
decides to travel on an air-ship to the other side of the world where her son lives.
Onboard the air-ship, Vashti is distressed by the need to talk to and touch other
people, and she is entirely uninterested in the natural scenery below. When she arrives in her
son’s room, angry at him for making her undergo such a worthless trip, he tells her that he has
been threatened with “Homelessness”—a form of execution in which the victim is placed on
the earth’s surface without protective equipment, killing them. Kuno tells Vashti the story of
how he escaped to the earth’s surface through a ventilation shaft and stayed there for a short
time, fascinated by the natural world around him, before being drawn back underground by
the Machine’s Mending Apparatus. Feeling that her son’s deviations are unforgivable, Vashti
leaves and rarely talks to him again.
In the following years, respirators (protective equipment) are abolished, making it
impossible to visit the earth’s surface. Meanwhile, the Machine is increasingly worshipped as
a god. Kuno calls Vashti and tells her that “the Machine is stopping,” a statement that makes
no sense to her. Defects start to appear in the Machine’s system, such as flaws in the music,
fruit, beds, and other objects that the Machine summons. These defects become worse as time
goes on, sparking outrage and panic in the society. The Committee of the Machine reveals
that the Mending Apparatus itself has been broken.
One day, the ultimate disaster strikes, and the Machine stops entirely. All lines of
communication are cut, and the air and light start to dissipate, condemning all the people
living underground to certain death. As Vashti watches the crowds of people dying around
her, she reunites with Kuno. He says there is no hope for them, but there are still humans
living above-ground—“the Homeless”—who will carry on after this calamity, now that
humanity has learned its lesson about the Machine. Vashti realizes that her son has been right
all along about the Machine’s destructive impact on humanity. Vashti and Kuno embrace as
an air-ship crashes into the city, destroying it and killing them.

Summary:
"The Machine Stops" is a science fiction short story written by E. M. Forster, first
published in 1909. It's set in a future society where humanity lives underground in individual,
self-contained rooms, and virtually all of their needs are met by a vast, omnipotent Machine.
"The Machine Stops" is set in a distant future where humanity lives underground in
isolated cells, each equipped with all the comforts and necessities provided by a vast and all-
powerful Machine. This society has become completely reliant on the Machine for every
aspect of their lives, from food production to communication. People rarely leave their rooms
and instead interact through a global network that connects them virtually.
The story primarily follows Vashti, a lecturer and writer, who is emblematic of this
society's values and way of life. Vashti is a devout believer in the Machine and its infallibility.
She delivers lectures via video conferencing to audiences around the world, discussing
abstract ideas and theories. Her life is solitary, and she has little desire to explore the world
beyond her room or the confines of the Machine.
However, Vashti's son, Kuno, is a contrast to her. Kuno is curious and discontented
with the society's overreliance on the Machine. He believes there is more to life than living in
a small cell and longs to experience the surface of the Earth, which has become an
inhospitable place due to a past environmental catastrophe. Kuno's desire to explore the
surface and his criticism of the Machine's dominance is seen as heretical by most of society.
As the story unfolds, signs of trouble emerge. The Machine begins to malfunction,
causing disruptions in the supply of air, which is vital for the underground civilization.
Despite Vashti's attempts to report these issues, the authorities seem indifferent, highlighting
the complacency and bureaucracy ingrained in the society.
Kuno, determined to prove that the Machine is failing, makes a daring escape to the
surface. He experiences the outside world, which is both beautiful and dangerous. Kuno
realizes that the Machine is indeed breaking down irreparably and that humanity must adapt
to survive.
Kuno returns to Vashti's room to share his findings and pleads with her to leave the
Machine's control before it's too late. Tragically, Vashti is unable to accept this reality, and
Kuno dies in her room as the Machine's failure becomes imminent.
In the story's haunting conclusion, the Machine finally stops, plunging the
underground civilization into darkness and chaos. Vashti, now cut off from communication
with the rest of humanity, contemplates her isolation and the dire consequences of their
overreliance on the Machine.
"The Machine Stops" serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of blind
technological dependence, the loss of human connection, and the consequences of neglecting
the natural world. It emphasizes the need for balance and critical thinking in the face of rapid
technological advancement.
Key themes and ideas explored in E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops":
Technological Dependency: The story portrays a society entirely dependent on a vast,
complex Machine for their basic needs, such as food, communication, and entertainment.
This extreme reliance on technology reflects a warning about the dangers of becoming too
dependent on machines and automation, a theme still relevant in our increasingly technology-
driven world.
Isolation and Alienation: The inhabitants of this underground society live in isolated,
individual rooms, rarely interacting face-to-face. They communicate through screens and
have lost the ability to connect with one another in a meaningful way. This isolation serves as
a critique of the potential consequences of technological advancements that replace human
interaction with digital interfaces.
Resistance to Change: Vashti's initial rejection of her son Kuno's ideas and her refusal to
believe that the Machine is failing highlight the resistance to change and innovation in the
society. This resistance to questioning the status quo and clinging to familiar comforts is a
recurring theme in dystopian literature.
Environmental Concerns: The story also touches on environmental themes. The surface of
the Earth is portrayed as an inhospitable place, which may imply a commentary on the
consequences of environmental degradation. The society's choice to live underground could
be seen as a metaphor for humanity's tendency to disconnect from the natural world.
Loss of Individuality: The citizens of this society are assigned numbers instead of names,
emphasizing their loss of individuality and identity. This reflects a concern about the
dehumanizing effects of a highly mechanized and automated society where personal identity
is subsumed by the Machine.
Hubris and Consequences: The story ultimately explores the consequences of human hubris
in creating a machine that becomes all-powerful. The Machine's eventual breakdown
represents the vulnerability of even the most advanced technologies and the folly of placing
too much faith in them.
Crisis and Revelation: As the Machine begins to fail, there are moments of crisis and fear
among the inhabitants. This serves as a turning point, prompting some characters to question
the society's reliance on the Machine and the values it represents.
In summary, "The Machine Stops" serves as a thought-provoking critique of a society
overly dependent on technology, highlighting the dangers of isolation, loss of individuality,
and the consequences of neglecting the natural world. It encourages readers to reflect on the
potential downsides of unchecked technological progress and the importance of maintaining
meaningful human connections.

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