The Machine Stops
E. M. Forster · first published 1909 · ISBN 9780143447016
Humanity lives underground in a vast interconnected machine that provides everything: food, entertainment, and communication through air tubes and telecommunication devices. The surface is abandoned and mythologized. Vashti and her son Kuno live in this womb until Kuno's heretical desire to visit the surface disrupts their mechanical existence. Forster wrote this over a century before the internet became central to life.
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For its time, the prescience is staggering. Forster foresaw isolation through technology, the elevation of abstract communication over presence, and the brittleness of systems that assume continuous power. It remains the most underrated ancestor of contemporary tech dystopias.