Images of a networked society: E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops."

Studies in Short Fiction, Wntr, 1997 by Marcia Bundy Seabury

(6) Elkins develops, without focus on computers, the issue of mediated experiences in "The Machine Stops," as technology intervenes "between man and his social and, physical world" (see 55-59).

(7) A term and concept Postman explores (70); cf. Roszak's discussion of "data glut" (162 ff.). With regard to Vashti's responses, cf. Postman's claim that "those who feel most comfortable in Technopoly ... believe that information is an unmixed blessing, which through its continued and uncontrolled production and dissemination offers increased freedom, creativity, and peace of mind.... the computer redefines humans as `information processors' and nature itself as information to be processed" (71, 111).

(8) Note that Cox has modified or changed many of his predictions about the secular city, as he discusses in his 1995 book Fire from Heaven.

WORKS CITED

Asimov, Isaac. Robot Visions. New York: Penguin Roc, 1990.

--, Patricia S. Warrick, and Martin H. Greenberg, eds. Machines That Think: The Best Science Fiction Stories about Robots and Computers. New York: Holt, 1984.

Beauchamp, Gorman. "Technology in the Dystopian Novel." Modern Fiction Studies 32 (1986): 53-63.

Brander, Laurence. E. M. Forster. A Critical Study. Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell UP, 1970.

Cirlot, Juan Eduardo. A Dictionary of Symbols. Trans. Jack Sage. London: Routledge, 1962.

Colmer, John. E. M. Forster: The Personal Voice. London: Routledge, 1975.

Cox, Harvey. The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective. New York: Macmillan, 1966.

Dunn, Thomas P., and Richard D. Erlich. "A Vision of Dystopia: Beehives and Mechanization." The Journal of General Education 33 (1981): 45-57.

Elkins, Charles. "E. M. Forster's `The Machine Stops': Liberal-Humanist Hostility to Technology." Erlich and Dunn 47-61.

Erlich, Richard D., and Thomas P. Dunn, ed. Clockwork Worlds. Mechanized Environments in SF. Westport Connecticut: Greenwood, 1983.

Forster, E. M. "The Machine Stops." The Eternal Moment and Other Stories. New York: Harcourt, 1956. 3-37.

--. "What I Believe." Two Cheers for Democracy. 1938. New York: Harcourt, 1951. 67-76.

Frost, Robert. "Education by Poetry: A Meditative Monologue." Robert Frost. Poetry and Prose. Ed. Edward Connery Lathem and Lawrance Thompson. New York: Holt, 1972. 329-40.

Frye, Northrop. "Varieties of Literary Utopias." Utopias and Utopian Thought: A Timely Appraisal. Ed. Frank E. Manuel. Boston: Beacon, 1965. 25-49.

Furbank, P. N. E. M. Forster. A Life. Vol. 1: The Growth of the Novelist (1879-1914). London: Secker & Warburg, 1977.

Gillie, Christopher. A Preface to Forster. New York: Longman, 1983.

Herz, Judith Scherer. The Short Narratives of E. M. Forster. New York: St. Martin's, 1988.

Hillegas, Mark E. The Future as Nightmare: H. G. Wells and the Anti-Utopians. New York: Oxford UP, 1967.

Kelvin, Norman. E. M. Forster. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1967.

Langer, Susanne K. "Man and Animal: The City and the Hive." Philosophical Sketches. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1962. 108-22.