Help No Longer Needed to identify a science fiction short story - thanks to all!

[jeffreyab]

Does this plot of a short story sound familiar to anyone?

Its from before the early 1960's

The atmosphere of the Earth has been poisoned people are told so everyone lives in little rooms and talks back and forth via computer terminals and has their food delievered automatically.

A son wants to meet his mother face to face but she is strangely reluctant to do so.

He comes and gets her and they go to the surface and find that things are not as bad as they had been told.

It was part of a book of short stories we used have at the Sarnia Library and was also used in a high school English class in the early 1960's.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

E. M. Forster - The Machine Stops

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

Sounds like E.M. Forster - The Machine Stops, in terms of set up but the ending is different (spoiler: The Machine Stops :-)) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much that was indeed the story! My Library Patron thanks you very much too!