Vashti’s attitude toward the Book is typical of a fanatically religious person: she finds a great sense of security in the Book, believing that it contains everything she could ever need to know. Consequently, people have come to religiously worship the Machine as something mysterious and all-powerful, creating an elaborate belief system that substitutes a piece of technology for a deity and treats the Book as is its sacred text. In the dystopian society of “The Machine Stops,” people live underground because they Earth’s surface is apparently no longer habitable, and the complex technological system known as the Machine ostensibly provides them with all their needs (air, food, shelter, communication, entertainment). Or available on any other podcast app too - just search 'Hugonauts The Machine Stops' and that should bring it up (distributed it via a sci-fi podcast called the Hugonauts - no ads or anything like that, just a passion project to share the love of books and help people find great sci-fi and avoid the chaff).The Book, an elaborate user’s manual for the Machine, symbolizes the dangers of blind faith. If you like audiobooks, here's the link to the free, full-cast version (just over an hour long): I think it came out really well, and hopefully this can help introduce a few more people to an amazing story that I very much think deserves to stand the test of time!
It's also old enough to be in the public domain, which means you can read it for free!Īnd because I had so much fun with this story, decided to make it into a fun project - made it into a free, full-cast audiobook of it with a buddy who is an audio engineer and an actor friend. In addition to being an eerily-spot on dystopian story, its also about ritual & superstition, resistance to change, the dangers of reliance on an all-powerful authority, the origins of knowledge and creativity, and a tumultuous relationship between a mother and son who see the world in very different ways. Forster predicted the general, gradual movement of our lives online - and he did it more than a hundred years ago! It feels like this story will keep being prescient for another hundred years too.
The comparisons to pandemic life are obvious - but even beyond that, it absolutely feels like E. If you like 1984 or Brave New World, this one is for you. Forster totally blew my mind when I first read it last year and I just haven't been able to stop thinking about it.
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