No stars this time, as this episode is a little different.
The Machine Stops is a fantastic short story that has entered the public domain - so we made our own free, full-cast audiobook recording of the story! We also made a short analysis episode talking about the story with our friend and third voice actor for the production, Kiran Subramaniam, to accompany the audiobook recording.
Please enjoy our analysis, and also our free audiobook of The Machine Stops!
Here’s the setup:
In the distant future, human beings have lost our ability to survive in the real world. Everyone exists in their own private cubicle with a vast underground network called the Machine, and only interact with each other through screens and microphones. There are no new ideas, and one’s social status comes from being best at rehashing old ideas. The story centers around a mother, Vashti, and her son, Kuno, who is beginning to have doubts about humanity’s reliance on The Machine.
Listen to the unabridged, free recording of The Machine Stops:
Hugonauts' Thoughts:
The Machine Stops might be the most prescient sci-fi short story we've ever read. It's dark, it’s dystopian, and it explores a world where everyone on earth lives in individual small rooms connected to each other only through machines, slowly losing their humanity - and this all was written in 1909! The comparisons to pandemic life are obvious - but even beyond that, it absolutely feels like E. M. Forster predicted the general, gradual movement of our lives online - and he did it more than a hundred years ago. It feels like this story will keep being prescient for another hundred years too.
In addition, it’s about ritual and superstition, resistance to change, the dangers of reliance on an all-powerful authority, the origins of knowledge and creativity, and a tumultuous relationship between a mother and son who see the world in very different ways.
If you like 1984 or Brave New World, this one is for you.
Watch or listen to the analysis of The Machine Stops:
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