E.M. Forster's novella "The Machine Stops" - 100th anniversary this month

[Lenona]

We had to read this in school, in the 1970s. Being only 12, I couldn't
really appreciate the intellectual horrors Forster predicted - only
the physical horrors. I only wish I had read it a second time before,
say, 1994. Nowadays, of course, it's impossible to read it without
thinking of you-know-what. When the people here kindly helped me to
identify it and I found a copy, I later described it here as being
sort of like "A Wrinkle in Time" with a sad ending, what with the
theme of love and nature.

You can read the whole novella here:

http://www.plexus.org/forster/index.html

The BBC filmed it in 1966.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2072180223855159236#

More recently:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRIlegVJIoQ
(10 minutes)

But WHY, in the latter, did they apparently decide to make Vashti and
Kuno something other than mother and son?!

Lenona.