The Machine Stops

Chillingly accurate description of how GamesEndLiteracy written by EmForster? in 1908. WikiPedia says "The Machine Stops" first appeared in The Oxford and Cambridge Review in November 1909, and was republished in Forster's The Eternal Moment and Other Stories in 1928.

Read it at http://www.plexus.org/forster.html (note: best to right-click and open it in a new window). It's also contained in ISBN 0233991670 and ISBN 0380000547 . But you won't find it at ProjectGutenberg.

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I disagree. Games don't figure very prominently in the story; to be honest, the Internet at large (including Wiki and Wiki-like sites especially) resembles Forster's Machine far more strongly than either a blanket category of "games" or a specific case of "multiplayer combat games".

Incidentally, the reason you won't find it at ProjectGutenberg is that it appears to be still under copyright. If the notations at the above site are correct, the story was written and published in 1909, but copyright was last asserted (or renewed) in 1947. I'm neither a lawyer nor a copyright expert, but I think this puts it in the "95 years or 2048, whichever comes last" rule. -- TimLesher

• In the U.S. "All works published in the United States before 1923 are in the public domain" (and as an extra note of interest "works published before 1964 that were not renewed are public domain"), quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_copyright_law#Duration_of_copyright
• Therefore a copy of the edition published in 1909 is definitely out of copyright in the U.S. This is not necessarily exactly the same situation in e.g. the U.K. And it may be a different situation if the copy was from the 1947 edition, if it differs from the 1909 edition. -- DougMerritt

I agree that the Machine is very InterNet-like. Nowadays we can use the internet for TeleCommuting to work, to order food for delivery, to chat and share knowledge with others, and so on. Someone who is sufficiently nerdy seldom needs to leave home. The Machine enables you to never leave your own room, see other people in the flesh, or develop muscle tone. Oh... My volume containing the story mentions a 1956 copyright, so perhaps ProjectGutenberg won't post it until 2051. -- ElizabethWiethoff

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CategoryScienceFiction