Post by Catsmate on May 20, 2016 11:14:07 GMT
A quickie, basically "E. M. Forster– Time Traveller"?
Edward Morgan Forster is one of those iconic English novelist whose name most people only vaguely remember. He's best known for A Passage to India, A Room with a View and Howards End (or at least for the Merchant/Ivory film adaptions of them), but did he somehow gain a glimpse of life in the twenty-first century?
His 1909 short story The Machine Stops depicts a rather familiar, though futuristic, world where face-to-face interaction is rare and most human communication is via screens or messages. Knowledge and ideas are shared by a system that links every home. It’s the story of a mother and son (Vashti and Kuno), who live in a post-apocalyptic world where people live individually in underground pods, with their every need provided for by the all-encompassing Machine. Naturally for an Edwardian warning it doesn't end well; humanity's reliance on the global Machine and it's lack of ability to understand and fix it, leads to another apocalypse.
Fascinating predictions for a man writing in an era where the telephone and radio were new developments.
Now the story isn't that accurate or indeed different from other works of the period, but it could be inserted into a game. Perhaps Forster briefly accompanied a time traveller (like Wells or Shelley) and visited the modern day (or near future). Perhaps he was mixed up in some Edwardian adventure and interacted with a Facebook and selfie obsessed teenage companion and got a perspective on the twenty-first century that's as accurate as an episode of Xena Warrior Princess?
Links.
Text of the story. Note that the text is not in the public domain in the UK but is in the USA.
BBC article.
Commentary on the story.
Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk-that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh-a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.
An electric bell rang.
An electric bell rang.
Edward Morgan Forster is one of those iconic English novelist whose name most people only vaguely remember. He's best known for A Passage to India, A Room with a View and Howards End (or at least for the Merchant/Ivory film adaptions of them), but did he somehow gain a glimpse of life in the twenty-first century?
His 1909 short story The Machine Stops depicts a rather familiar, though futuristic, world where face-to-face interaction is rare and most human communication is via screens or messages. Knowledge and ideas are shared by a system that links every home. It’s the story of a mother and son (Vashti and Kuno), who live in a post-apocalyptic world where people live individually in underground pods, with their every need provided for by the all-encompassing Machine. Naturally for an Edwardian warning it doesn't end well; humanity's reliance on the global Machine and it's lack of ability to understand and fix it, leads to another apocalypse.
Fascinating predictions for a man writing in an era where the telephone and radio were new developments.
Now the story isn't that accurate or indeed different from other works of the period, but it could be inserted into a game. Perhaps Forster briefly accompanied a time traveller (like Wells or Shelley) and visited the modern day (or near future). Perhaps he was mixed up in some Edwardian adventure and interacted with a Facebook and selfie obsessed teenage companion and got a perspective on the twenty-first century that's as accurate as an episode of Xena Warrior Princess?
Links.
Text of the story. Note that the text is not in the public domain in the UK but is in the USA.
BBC article.
Commentary on the story.
