People have become a shapeless mass, both with regards to their interaction with one another, and physically Vashti is describe as being a ‘swaddled lump of flesh’ with ‘a face as white as fungus’. In this world humanity has lost its humanity and called it civilisation – the sole use of online communication means nuances of expression are lost, conversations are a mass of vapid, pointless questions, and tempers are short. Whilst her son is dreaming of the stars, Vashti and the majority of people have accepted the convenience of the Machine and ‘good enough’ is the general rule. However, she finds the idea of having to leave her audience and seeing the ‘horrible brown earth’ distasteful. In this midst of worldwide compliance, one man, Kuno, is becoming increasingly unsatisfied with the limitations of his life and the story begins with him calling his mother, Vashti, located in an underground cell on the opposite side of the world, and begging her to fly on the airship to visit him.

Sex has been reduced to a biological necessity and pain and discomfort have been abolished, and so, you may argue, has any semblance of what life really is. The Machine runs everything, and everybody’s lives are lived out in their one room, where they can speak to thousands of others, but never meet them face to face.

In a distant future humans live in single cells underground, connected via a communications network which, despite being first published in 1909, strikingly predicts social networking, video and conference calls, and the reduction of human interaction to screens and immobility. Well known for novels such as A Room With A View and Howard’s End, EM Forster also wrote a range of short stories, including the dystopic and quite brilliant The Machine Stops.

The machine stops and other stories