E.M. Forster

E.M. Forster appears in Kyle’s Historical Futurism - Research as the author of the short story “The Machine Stops,” catalogued alongside other foundational speculative short fiction — Isaac Asimov’s “The Last Question,” Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Nine Billion Names of God,” Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder,” Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life,” and others. The story is gathered as source material for Kyle’s work on Historical Futurism — the study of how past visions of the future shaped, and were shaped by, their era.

He also surfaces in Wicked through a quote Gregory Maguire returns to twice as the animating creed of his writing life: “My defense at any Last Judgment would be, ‘I was trying to connect up and use all the fragments I was born with.’” Maguire frames it as an apologetic about the limits and range of an authorial life — a statement about making coherent art out of scattered, inherited material — and “relishes” it enough to reprise it within the same passage.

Context: E.M. Forster (1879–1970) was an English novelist and essayist (A Room with a View, Howards End, A Passage to India) whose epigraph “Only connect” echoes the fragment-connecting sentiment quoted in Wicked. His 1909 short story “The Machine Stops” is an unusually early and prescient work of dystopian science fiction, depicting a humanity living underground in isolation, mediated entirely by a global Machine.

Where this appears

• Historical Futurism - Research — listed as author of the short story “The Machine Stops” in the speculative-fiction reading catalog feeding the Historical Futurism essay.
• Wicked — quoted twice as Gregory Maguire’s stated artistic creed about connecting up the fragments one is born with.