E. M. Forster's The Machine Stops

“If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future?” Wrote Stephen Hawking, but perhaps people from the future do walk amongst us, and we just do not notice them due to them having learned how to blend in. All they would have got to do is to research the dress and mannerisms of our time, and now they are hidden in plain sight. However, what if a person from a hundred years ago were to visit us now? We would probably think they were just a crazy, weirdly dressed homeless person and not pay them any mind, as is usually the case. What if this time traveler from the past came to visit, and wrote a story in the past about their visit in the future? E.M. Forster has written a prophetic short story where he describes a future society …show more content…
Everybody should read it, and consider how far we may go ourselves down the road of technological ‘advancement’ and forget what it truly means to be alive.” I agree with him that everyone should read this novella, I absolutely loved it and I believe it to be a must read for anyone young or old who enjoys reading. It is more relevant to today’s society than when it was first published over a hundred years ago. Maybe Forster visited us after humanity had to move underground to escape global warming, and this is the story of the fate that awaits us. But then again, what wondrous unconventional ideas are currently being written and dismissed concerning the future that seems too far-fetched, incredible, or bizarre to ever be accomplished by humans? What will one day be thought of as prophetic in a hundred years, the way we think about the technological prophecies of The Machine Stops that were laughable at the time it was written? Possibly it is humans colonizing space? It could be being able to travel in time forward and backward, or maybe putting our minds in robots and keeping death at bay forever. Only time will tell which one of these impossible ideas will freak out a future generation of