[I have to confess, I wrote a fair swath of this entry after reading just a page or two, and then I read the rest. The subject and setting of this story sparks my brain immediately. I've been thinking about how the future is portrayed in various media since I saw Back To The Future in 1985.]

The 23 page story, The Machine Stops, by E.M. Forster was written in 1909. I’m not surprised by the fact that 100 years have passed and there are still things we, living now, have in common with the essential plot and characters in this story. The human being has not changed much since the ancient Greeks wrote the deus ex machina into their plays as a fail-safe device for characters in trouble.

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