How E.M. Forster's Only Foray Into Sci-Fi Predicted Social Distancing | Literary Hub

In 1909, long before the invention of the World Wide Web or the prospect of a world where we must live socially distant from each other, the English writer E.M. Forster arguably predicted both. Each idea appears-in its own way-in one of Forster's most curious short stories, "The Machine Stops." All the more remarkable was the fact that Forster was not a science-fiction writer; "The Machine Stops" would be his only entry in the genre. Still, that Forster dabbled in the genre wasn't really that surprising, given his range as a writer, from his more realistic novels of social critique, like A Room with a View and Howards End, to his posthumously published narrative of queer desire, Maurice, or his more fantastical stories, like "The Celestial Omnibus." Forster delighted in moments of fantasy in his fiction, and so, in some ways, "The Machine Stops" was right up his aesthetic alley.