When reading The Machine Stops, you will inevitably be floored by the fact that it was written in 1909 - a full 98 years before Steve Jobs announced our very own pocketable portal screens in 2007. Just how E.M. Forster was able to capture not only the functioning of our technologies but the nature of their impact so long ago I have no idea. Most notably, his keen understanding of the impact of the separation of the virtual persona from the actual human while, by all measures, one engages with the art, music and ideas of humanity more deeply than most people ever do in physical space. As a result of this virtual existence, the protagonist recoils from the tangible through sunsets to her own son. The failure of the manicured and isolationist ‘society’ in which she lives is similarly rejected, as she bathes in stagnant water and eats rotten fruit before she is finally denied rest. The people of The Machine Stops reject religion as archaic and abhorrent, while coming to worship The Machine itself and the one tangible and personal object which they carry.

Just what was E.M. Forster observing in his own community to inspire this? Perhaps seemingly modern issues aren’t as new as we tend to think, and changes to the way we communicate always usher in challenges and new waves of isolation and hypocritical religiosity. Or maybe he just had a time machine. Above all, I wonder what seemingly insane science fiction written now will turn out to be all too prescient.