E.M. Forster’s 1909 fable, ‘The Machine Stops’ - which depicts a world state in which the inhabitants live inside vast underground cities, isolated from one another except for an electronic mass communications network - is a powerful story of technological alienation. The science fiction tale not only comments upon a burgeoning screen culture but also on our diminishing capacity to visualise and share an alternative reality, writes Paul March-Russel.

‘Imagine, if you can’. These are the opening words to E.M. Forster’s fable, ‘The Machine Stops’, which was first published in the Oxford and Cambridge Review in November 1909. With the exception of his novel, A Passage to India (1924), which remains of interest to postcolonial scholars, Forster’s standing has slipped within the academy. Too many Merchant and Ivory productions, perhaps. At the same time, though, Forster’s sole foray into scientific romance has grown in stature since the early 1990s.