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´"You talk as if a god had made the Machine," cried the other. "I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that."´

E.M. Forster is best known for his exquisite novels, but these two affecting short stories brilliantly combine the fantastical with the allegorical. In ´The Machine Stops´, humanity has isolated itself beneath the ground, enmeshed in automated comforts, and in ´The Celestial Omnibus´ a young boy takes a trip his parents believe impossible.

This book contains The Machine Stops and A Celestial Omnibus.

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Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) was educated at King´s College, Cambridge, with whom he had a lifelong connection. He was elected to an Honorary Fellowship in 1946. He wrote six novels - Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910), A Passage to India (1924), which won both the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Maurice , written in 1914, was published posthumously in 1971. He also published two volumes of short stories; two collections of essays; a critical work (Aspects of the Novel); The Hill of Devi; two biographies; two books about Alexandria; and the libretto for Britten´s opera Billy Budd. He died in 1970. In his obituary The Times called him ´one of the most esteemed English novelists of his time´.

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