The Machine Stops

The Machine Stops is a short science fiction novel written by E. M. Forster and originally published in 1909 in The Oxford and Cambridge Review.

The story, divided into three chapters, presents a futuristic world where the population cannot live on the surface of the planet and must be confined underground in solitary, identical lives in which the Machine provides the basic human needs at the push of a button.

Human interaction has almost completely disappeared and there is hardly any physical contact. There are no more coffee meetings or get-togethers with friends, but everyone stays in their own small room and talks to each other through a screen.

One of the characteristics for which this story stands out is its ability to predict technologies that would come almost a century later, such as the Internet and electronic mail. At the time it sounded futuristic and sci-fi, but it is beginning to resemble today's society...