# Trying to identify a sci-fi story **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 11, 2000, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-identify-a-sci-fi-story/29021 "2000-08-11T21:00:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2000, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-identify-a-sci-fi-story/29021/1 "2000-08-11T21:00:34Z")
I’m trying to help someone else out. It has a “Logan’s Run” sort of feel to it. Here is is info in its entirety: I have been trying for several months to identify the title and author of a short science fiction story I read several years ago in an anthology. I remember the plot vividly. It takes place in a world of the future in which all inhabitants live below the surface in what seem like pods. Their nourishment and other material needs are supplied to them by some unseen and benign central mechanism. The pods are also connected with each other so that the inhabitants may communicate at least by audio, if not video, without leaving their pods. In fact, they have parties by simply arranging to meet “online” at a given time. Nobody ever leaves his or her pod, and nobody wants to. Everyone seems quite content with this existence. The dramatic tension revolves around the two characters in the story - a mother and son. The mother is thoroughly satisfied with her existence; the son is continually wondering what is “up there” on the surface. The common wisdom is that it is uninhabitable, an alien and threatening environment. The mother regularly admonishes her son to forget about that part of their world, urging him to enjoy the pleasures available in their pods. The climax of the story has the son finally taking the risk to find the way to the surface and discovering that it is in fact a habitable, beautiful place. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2000, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-identify-a-sci-fi-story/29021/2 "2000-08-11T21:14:20Z")
Sounds like the SDMB! ---
**Author:** ![Spider\_Woman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cdc98d/32.png) [@Spider\_Woman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spider_Woman)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2000, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-identify-a-sci-fi-story/29021/3 "2000-08-11T21:46:14Z")
Also sounds a lot like the movie “The Matrix.” ---
**Author:** ![Sealemon88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c68b51/32.png) [@Sealemon88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sealemon88)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2000, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-identify-a-sci-fi-story/29021/4 "2000-08-11T21:48:07Z")
I have no idea what the story is, although it uses a theme that’s been in several stories i’ve read. I really came in here to say that CalMeacham’s post is the funniest thing I’ve read today! ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2000, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-identify-a-sci-fi-story/29021/5 "2000-08-11T21:56:54Z")
Does the main character try to understand distance by walking places, and understand the concept of near and far? At the end, he reaches the surface but the “white worms” drag him back. Finally the central mechanism fails, the world falls apart, and he reaches his mother on foot somehow, through the disaster of the place falling apart. I connect this with the title “Lair of the White Worm” but a quick web search comes up with a different story with that title, by Bram Stoker. Your description matches exactly a story I read in college in a sci-fi course. I’ll see if I have the anthology back at home. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2000, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-identify-a-sci-fi-story/29021/6 "2000-08-11T21:58:07Z")
Title: The Machine Stops Author: (name escapes me) I read this in an old anthology. Great story! ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2000, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-identify-a-sci-fi-story/29021/7 "2000-08-11T22:19:23Z")
I think we have a winner. That sounds like it. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2000, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-identify-a-sci-fi-story/29021/8 "2000-08-12T02:44:35Z")
Tanks a bunch! ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2000, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-identify-a-sci-fi-story/29021/9 "2000-08-12T03:02:40Z")
SFDB says the author is E. M. Forster. ---
**Author:** ![DennisKy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/58f4c7/32.png) [@DennisKy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DennisKy)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2000, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-identify-a-sci-fi-story/29021/10 "2000-08-12T05:20:47Z")
I believe the author of this was none other than Rudyard Kipling. ---
**Author:** ![Lux\_Fiat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bc79bd/32.png) [@Lux\_Fiat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lux_Fiat)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2000, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-identify-a-sci-fi-story/29021/11 "2000-08-12T08:09:24Z")
Nope, nope. E.M. Forster it is. It’s in my _Treasury of Science Fiction Classics_, published in 1954 (the story itself, the book says, was published in 1928, in _The Eternal Moment and Other Stories_) > [@](#): > > Man, the flower of all flesh, the noblest of all creatures visible, man who had once made god in his image, and had mirrored his strength on the constellations, beatiful naked man was dying, strangled in the garments that he had woven. Century after century had he toiled, and here was his reward. Truly the garment had seemed heavenly at first, shot with the colours of culture, sewn with the threads of self-denial. And heavenly it had been so long as it was a garment and no more, so long as man could shed it at will and live by the essence that is his soul, and the essence, equally divine, that is his body. _Hell_ yeah. ---
**Author:** ![Lux\_Fiat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bc79bd/32.png) [@Lux\_Fiat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lux_Fiat)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2000, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-identify-a-sci-fi-story/29021/12 "2000-08-12T08:12:51Z")
**Beautiful** naked man was dying, of course, not beatiful naked man. I previewed that, too. _sigh_ Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![DennisKy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/58f4c7/32.png) [@DennisKy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DennisKy)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2000, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-identify-a-sci-fi-story/29021/13 "2000-08-13T05:48:16Z")
Lux, thanks for the correction. Now, I’d just like to know why it’s so stuck in my memory as being connected to Kipling. I remember reading the story in a paperback collection as a teenager, and being impressed with it because of the year it was written. Let me be sure this is the story I remember: does the protagonist at some point tell the person he’s communicating with that he’s built up his strength by holding his pillow at arm’s-length for hours? And, at some point, do the characters discuss the recent destruction of a provocative statue entitled _Nigger In Flames_? ---
**Author:** ![Lux\_Fiat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/bc79bd/32.png) [@Lux\_Fiat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lux_Fiat)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2000, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trying-to-identify-a-sci-fi-story/29021/14 "2000-08-13T08:34:08Z")
He did build up his strength like that, and by hanging from his arms and pacing, but I didn’t see anything about the statue that you mentioned.