The Machine Starts

In the early days of lockdown, when the process itself was new and frightening, and I wasn't sleeping very well, one of the things I thought about in the small hours was E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops. I hadn't read it for years, but the image that stayed in my mind was the society of individuals, each in their own room, communicating only through screens, all their needs met by the Machine, never going out, afraid to go out. I watched myself growing more accustomed to staying home, more nervous about ging out, and I thought I don't know about how the machine stops, this is how it starts.

So it must be a sign of growing optimism that I've finally reread The Machine Stops. My memories of it were not completely accurate: in particular, I had remembered a happier ending than Forster gives it. The stopping of the Machine is a release of sorts, but not exactly a liberation. I had also managed to forget that the relationship which is central to the narrative (despite all the features of the society described which might be expected to cancel it out) is that between a mother and her son.

Which is a reminder not to read the story as SF, with an eye to worldbuilding, or prescience, or any other thing that Forster is not inteerested in doing. Nonetheless, you'd have to be more self-denying a reader than I am not to pause over passages like:

"I want you to come and see me."
Vashti watched his face in the blue plate.
"But I can see you!" she exclaimed. "What more do you want?"
"I want to see you not through the Machine," said Kuno. "I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine."