The Time Machine - BookWyrm

English language

Published July 13, 2014

ISBN:: 978-1-63423-000-1

(4 reviews)

The Time Machine is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895. The work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively forward or backward through time. The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now almost universally used to refer to such a vehicle or device.Utilizing a frame story set in then-present Victorian England, Wells' text focuses on a recount of the otherwise anonymous Time Traveller's journey into the far future. A work of future history and speculative evolution, Time Machine is interpreted in modern times as a commentary on the increasing inequality and class divisions of Wells' era, which he projects as giving rise to two separate human species: the fair, childlike Eloi, and the savage, simian Morlocks, distant descendants of the contemporary upper and lower classes respectively. It …

The Time Machine is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895. The work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively forward or backward through time. The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now almost universally used to refer to such a vehicle or device.Utilizing a frame story set in then-present Victorian England, Wells' text focuses on a recount of the otherwise anonymous Time Traveller's journey into the far future. A work of future history and speculative evolution, Time Machine is interpreted in modern times as a commentary on the increasing inequality and class divisions of Wells' era, which he projects as giving rise to two separate human species: the fair, childlike Eloi, and the savage, simian Morlocks, distant descendants of the contemporary upper and lower classes respectively. It is believed that Wells' depiction of the Eloi as a race living in plenitude and abandon was inspired by the utopic romance novel News from Nowhere (1890), though Wells' universe in the novel is notably more savage and brutal.In his 1931 preface to the book, Wells wrote that The Time Machine seemed "a very undergraduate performance to its now mature writer, as he looks over it once more", though he states that "the writer feels no remorse for this youthful effort". However, critics have praised the novella's handling of its thematic concerns, with Marina Warner writing that the book was the most significant contribution to understanding fragments of desire before Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, with the novel "[conveying] how close he felt to the melancholy seeker after a door that he once opened on to a luminous vision and could never find again".The Time Machine has been adapted into two feature films of the same name, as well as two television versions and many comic book adaptations. It has also indirectly inspired many more works of fiction in many media productions.

32 editions

Kelson Reads reviewed The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

Thought-provoking speculation about the future of humanity

5 stars

Content warning Not sure why I'm putting a spoiler alert on a book that's more than a century old, but hey, you might not have seen either of the movies, and even if you did, they might not have made it clear what was going on with the Morlocks and Eloi.

I remember watching the 1960 movie of The Time Machine many times on TV when I was growing up. But somehow I never quite got around to reading the book until now.

It's a bit dry by modern standards, but the framing sequence does draw you in, and of course once he starts telling the story of his trip 800,000 years into the future, there's a wealth of speculation. The narrator self-conciously admits that he's drawing inferences on what's going on beyond what he sees, that the short week he had in that time isn't enough for him to be sure he really understands.

There's a bit of adventure, a bit of travelogue, a side trip to the last days of Earth before the expanding red giant sun swallows it up. But time travel isn't really the point. It's just the mechanism to comment on 19th century western society.

Eat the Rich:

The division between labor and capital, or working class and aristocracy, has become full-on speciation. Humanity has split into the beautiful, childlike, idle Eloi and the monstrous, brutal Morlocks who maintain the vast underground machines that provide the Eloi everything they need.

Ironically, the socialist Wells sets up his protagonist and his audience to have more in common with the Eloi than the Morlocks. The time traveler is upper class, has servants, and has the money and time to spend years tinkering with inventions. His friends gather for formal dinner parties, though they're mostly professionals rather than idlers. He pities the Eloi for their complete uselessness, identifies with them as they look more like today's humans, and of course has nothing to fear from them. The Morlocks look more monstrous to him, and you get the impression that even if they weren't attacking the Eloi at night and stealing the time machine, he'd still be horrified rather than pity their fate.

(Interesting side note: the description of the Morlocks in the book is awfully similar to the way Weta Digital designed Gollum. And yet Bilbo and Frodo both found it in their hearts to pity him.)

It's a cautionary tale of what happens when you treat whole classes as subhuman, and still insist that they do all the work for you.

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