The Machine Stops

by E.M. Forster

The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you.

Those funny old days, when men went for change of air instead of changing the air in their rooms!

Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over.

The forests had been destroyed during the literature epoch for the purpose of making newspaper-pulp,

That was my first lesson. Man’s feet are the measure for distance, his hands are the measure for ownership, his body is the measure for all that is lovable and desirable and strong.

Those who still wanted to know what the earth was like had after all only to listen to some gramophone, or to look into some cinematophote.

‘there will come a generation that had got beyond facts, beyond impressions, a generation absolutely colourless, a generation seraphically free From taint of personality, which will see the French Revolution not as it happened, nor as they would like it to have happened, but as it would have happened, had it taken place in the days of the Machine.’