Laith
Just put this at the top of your TBR, you won't regret reading 35 brilliant pages. I had to stop multiple times to double check, but this was published in 1909. Read it yourself, it does not read like that at all, like not one bit, it could have been written in 2021, I thought it was from 2021!
This is a short story about a future where humanity lives inside of a giant, globe spanning, subterranean machine. Each person lives within their own little pod, each person is connected to everyone else through a system of tubes and wires that transmit sound and video. The Machine cares for everyone; generations of humans have been raised within its confines, few desiring to trade their cocoons for Earth's poisoned surface. I won't give any more away except to say that this is a warning about embracing technology and forgetting what it means to live.
I think what really had me in disbelief over the age of this short story is just how close Forster's world came to life under quarantine. This has been commented on in recent years, and it's the fun fact that put this on my radar: This reads like someone with a time machine wrote it. It is SHOCKING how close modernity is to this dystopia. There's stuff we all now recognize as a part of mundane reality, facetime and IMs and doordash and not leaving your house for weeks at a time- and funny enough also airports and commercial aviation (which wouldn't be a thing for another 15 years).
If you've seen Wall-E I doubt you could read this story without thinking it must have been the inspiration behind that vision of the future. I don't know about that, but this story is without question ahead of its time. It didn't really see acclaim until the 1960s but here it is 60 years after its second wind still mindbogglingly prescient and relevant.
This is an unquestionable 10/10 and not difficult to get through in the slightest, I don't think I can say that for anything else this old. Seriously it's like 35 pages, just read it.
Just put this at the top of your TBR, you won't regret reading 35 brilliant pages. I had to stop multiple times to double check, but this was published in 1909. Read it yourself, it does not read like that at all, like not one bit, it could have been written in 2021, I thought it was from 2021!
This is a short story about a future where humanity lives inside of a giant, globe spanning, subterranean machine. Each person lives within their own little pod, each person is connected to everyone else through a system of tubes and wires that transmit sound and video. The Machine cares for everyone; generations of humans have been raised within its confines, few desiring to trade their cocoons for Earth's poisoned surface. I won't give any more away except to say that this is a warning about embracing technology and forgetting what it means to live.
I think what really had me in disbelief over the age of this short story is just how close Forster's world came to life under quarantine. This has been commented on in recent years, and it's the fun fact that put this on my radar: This reads like someone with a time machine wrote it. It is SHOCKING how close modernity is to this dystopia. There's stuff we all now recognize as a part of mundane reality, facetime and IMs and doordash and not leaving your house for weeks at a time- and funny enough also airports and commercial aviation (which wouldn't be a thing for another 15 years).
If you've seen Wall-E I doubt you could read this story without thinking it must have been the inspiration behind that vision of the future. I don't know about that, but this story is without question ahead of its time. It didn't really see acclaim until the 1960s but here it is 60 years after its second wind still mindbogglingly prescient and relevant.
This is an unquestionable 10/10 and not difficult to get through in the slightest, I don't think I can say that for anything else this old. Seriously it's like 35 pages, just read it.