This is truly one of the most amazing things I’ve ever read. It’s almost inconceivable to me how an author could extrapolate so keenly where technological advances would take us more than a century later.
Wow, that was interesting… and it really hit the nerve in terms of pointing out the final destination, if people proceed forever to give up autonomy for comfort.
I wonder if the makers of The Matrix had read this story? :D
P.S. Unrelated
Reading this, I could not help remember a piece of science fiction of the same era named The Night Land (1912), which I struggled to read recently. :) It’s also an end-of-the-world story, but a very different one, where the Sun has died and humans have gradually retreated forever, finally coming under siege in a single remaining habitat powered by Earth Current (geothermal? geoelectric?) and protected by an Air Clog, on an Earth that is inhabited by more than slightly Lovecraftian kinds of life - a very depressing world, and an unrealistic world, but good quality horror… written deliberately in an approximation of 18th century English across 500 pages, so a pestilence to read. :) It’s ironic that the author of the Night Land, leaning a bit conservative socially, managed to imagine telepathy and force fields, but failed to imagine gender equality. :D (also failed to imagine tanks or protected fighting vehicles - his hero journeys through the land on foot) The author died as an artillerist shortly after, in WW I, in the same kind of trenches where Tolkien made his first drafts about Gondolin…
Whoa. Fascinating stuff!
I read that a long time ago, and it seems still quite spot on. That was amazing work.