>Back when I was a teenager, I read a short story called "The Machine Stops".
>I think it might have been be E.M. Forster, but don't remember. I think it
>was written somewhere around the 1940s.
Much more strikingly, Forster published it in 1909. [!!] It was an
explicit rejoinder to Wells's 1905 A MODERN UTOPIA. It's in his 1908
collection THE ETERNAL MOMENT, and in many `best of golden oldie' sf
anthologies.
Damien Broderick