Seabury, Marcia Bundy

Seabury, Marcia Bundy, "Images of a Networked Society: E. M. Forster's 'The Machine Stops.'" Studies in Short Fiction 34.1 ([Jan.] 1997): 61-71.

"It is a commonplace that we are in the midst of a computer revolution that will change our society perhaps more radically than the Industrial Revolution, and likewise a commonplace that the literary imagination has often gone before us in envisioning not only the shape but the possible significance of such changes. A striking example is E. M. Forster's dystopian story 'The Machine Stops' (1909), which deserves renewed attention as the computer age accelerates and as the breakup of the Soviet Union may make Orwell's world of totalitarian control and fear, 1984, seem less imminent than Forster's of satisfied individuals sitting, before their networked personal computers." — Opening paragraph . As the title and opening indicate, the essay looks at the importance of home computers as part of "a global computer network," imaged in "The Machine Stops" (66). An important contribution to the critical literature on "Machine Stops" in particular and hive dystopias in general.

4. LitCrit, RDE, 16/VII/10