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...ask questions like "Can you suggest some high quality fantasy or sci-fi works that have as their core theme "the relationship of humans with their environment" or "the nature of intelligence" or whatever.

"The Machine Stops" E M Forster.

Yes, the "Passage to India" and "Howards End" Forster. It's a short story in response to H G Wells, with a theme of mankind's dependence on (and unthinking acceptance of) technology, and withdrawal from a "natural" environment towards a "virtual" one. Students should appreciate that even authors of the literary cannon saw sci-fi as a valid means of expression. It was written in 1909, so that's a nice 100 year distance between Forster's forecasting of a televisual, networked society and its reality to discuss. Its also available online at http://www.plexus.org/forster/index.html

Most people have focused on full-length or somewhat shorter novels. The choices people have suggested are great, but you're going to have to be choosy with the time that you have (Tolkien is a nice thought, but The Lord of the Rings is pretty much out of the question unless you want to do nothing else!). Shorter is better in some ways because it would let you get more variety. I'm rather fond of LeGuin's Earthsea books and Clarke's Against the Fall of Night because they are short, to the point, and relatively simple.

But for truly short stories: The Machine Stops by Forster. It's antiquated in some ways, historically prescient in others (I think of the remote, multi-person conversations that enthrall one of the characters as rather like the chat rooms of today). Anyway, it's enough to start a good conversation either from the main point of the story or about the historical quirks contained in it. There are even some nifty tie-ins with a recent movie: WALL-E. It's almost like an updated version in some ways.

I think Forster's story is also out of copyright and therefore there is no issue copying it for the class for free.

Another, similar story is "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster.

Read The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster. Written in 1909, it sure describes the Internet to a T.

This reminds me most strongly of a short story called The Machine Stops. Written in 1909, it anticipates display screens, robotic doctors, video conferencing, etc. You might find it interesting.

This will not end well.


(I wanted to post a link to the EC comics version of the story, since it truly captured the flabby indolence theme, but couldn't google it up. WTF isn't everything ever printed on the web yet?!!! Tom Sellek promised!)

Here's a bit of prior art which prefigures not just any number of our new Internet-era "innovations," among them Amazon's "one-click" patent and likewise rubbish, but indeed the entire toxic psychical atmosphere of this degraded, cramped, leashled era.

Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net