The Time Machine

by H. G. Wells

Ebook, 1895

Status

Available

Call number

Ebook

Publication

Project Gutenberg

Pages

151

Description

H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, from 1895, popularized the idea of a vehicle that allows its user to travel intentionally and selectively across time, and indeed Wells is credited with coining the very term "time machine." The Time Traveler of this novella tests his time machine with a leap forward to the year 802,701 A.D., to find that evolution has produced two very different post-human races - the peaceful and childlike fruit-eating Eloi and the Morlocks - pale, darkness-dwelling troglodites who operate the underground machinery that makes this seeming paradise possible.

Collection

Original publication date

1895

Media reviews

New Statesman
Without question The Time Machine... will take its place among the great stories of our language. Like all excellent works it has meanings within its meaning and no one who has read the story will forget the dramatic effect of the change of scene in the middle of the book, when the story alters its
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key, and the Time Traveller reveals the foundation of slime and horror on which the pretty life of his Arcadians is precariously and fearfully resting...

The Arcadians had become as pretty as flowers in their pursuit of personal happiness. They had dwindled and would be devoured because of that. Their happiness itself was haunted. Here Wells’s images of horror are curious. The slimy, the viscous, the foetal reappear; one sees the sticky, shapeless messes of pond life, preposterous in instinct and frighteningly without mind. One would like to hear a psychologist on these shapes which recall certain surrealist paintings; but perhaps the biologist fishing among the algas, and not the unconscious, is responsible for them.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini
It's funny, I remembered the central metaphor here all wrong--the Morlocks as gentle giants on the surface, the Eloi as exquisite vampires who prey on them. I guess I knew it didn't make any sense ("morlocks live underground" being surely part of our general cultural competency), but I didn't stop
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to think about it much and simply remembered this as one of the books my dad bribed me to read when I was a kid, the future world as magical and dark, and the further future as deeply chilling. It's interesting that it was that final future fantasy that stuck with me the most: the Morlocks and Eloi as a generic, if vivid, SF binary-opp society (and me getting all the details wrong), but the red dead sun, the slow-moving crabs, the slow fading of the last vestiges of the first heat of Creation and that polyp-like creature flopping and dying in the endless snow. Yikes! It makes you think, how long has it been since we had an end-of-the-world scenario that assumed our natural decline? Whether it's nuclear war or aliens or climate change or the matrix, present-day eschatology is all apocalypse, all the time. It's frivolous, histrionic, masturbatory. We are perfectionists who go to pieces at the slightest thing.

Contrast our Victorian Time Traveller and the "manly vigour of the race" (absolute Wellsian language here): these are people who finally have a basic scientific framework in place for understanding what life is, and they are eager to extend it even unto speculation about the building blocks of reality and what machines might be able to interfere with them, unto fables of devolution (from the precambrian we came, to the precambrian we shall return) and the interweaving of the biological and social (there are literally a billion ways to read the Es/Ms as mythologized capitalists and proles, and even Wells couldn't decide on just one, with the Time Traveller's shifting sense of where the (degenerate) mastery lies and where the (degenerate) abjection--in the end, mastery is abjection, and ownership of the means of production hasn't done the Morlocks any favours: I know I'd rather be a happy sexy Eloi even if my friends won't save me from drowning and the neighbours downstairs are getting ready to gut and fillet me.

It's shocking how it hits you right in your sense of what's real, in distinction, per above, from our currently favoured escapist end games tailormade for a romantic lead to shake his fist at God. Killing the deity and replacing him with evolution doesn't make us masters (in fact, having a skyfather makes us his favoured children); it displaces us once more from the centre, turns us into a mere chemical notion or momentary dissonance in the physical fabric. It is so much more tragic than the self-aggrandizing "end with violence" or "end with transcendence," since it happens so slowly there's no place for heroism at all. That reflects back on the nineteenth-century man of action at the centre too, of course, making of the Time Traveller, with his eugenic sensibilities and positivist social views and quickness to command the good small people and drub the bad, a kind of virile brain-brute, a veritable--to borrow the name of our local newspaper in "Victorian" Victoria, BC, if you can believe this--"Times-Colonist,"which when I was a kid I totally totally took to mean the "Colonist of Time," the paper that sails on through the times, broadsheets trim and newsprint-gray, collecting the events of the day and placing on them its imprimatur. "We were there. We told you how it was." On this day in history, the headlines said, TIME TRAVELLER PLANTS FLAG OF SCIENCE IN THE YEAR OF OUR WORLDVIEW 802,701.

It's actually just that the one paper the Times bought the other (the Colonist, still a fucked name). But in that light, how ripe is this book for any number of "Grendel"-style dip-and-flip inversions that expose the colonizer's total failure to get any of it right? Not only the gentle Morlocks as outlined above, but how about the smart Eloi, whose society actually sounds largely amazing, trying to drum up the interest to dim their sensibilities and teach this week's angry weirdo from the past how to speak their language and that they give of themselves to the Morlocks at the end of their lives because sustenance is a sacrament? Or the proto-(post-post-post-)fascist Morlocks that come back and invade Edwardian London and rule there? Some of these already exist, as many later writers have tried to fill out or address the Time Traveller's evident bewilderment. And it's a neat trick--Wells can't see his own biases, so he catapults his protgonist past the coming socialist utopia that the author himself certainly believed in and into a world so different that any attempt to navigate it is bound to end up as frustrated as the linen-suited orientalist trying to get a rickshaw. No wonder he was the blockbuster writer of his time! He's really good at being all things to all people.
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LibraryThing member sturlington
The Time Machine is not really a novel, or even a novella. It’s more like a pamphlet, as a vehicle for exploring Wells’ views on the future of humankind. There are no real characters; only one, the red-headed Filby, is even named, and he only appears in the first chapter for the purpose of
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arguing against time travel being possible.

Even if it is just a pamphlet, it is a beautifully written one, which is why I recommend reading it. The description of the process of time travel itself is wonderful, even if it disregards science altogether. I was captivated by the image of the time machine, with its levers and crystals, standing stationary in space while hurtling forward through time, so quickly that the sun rising and setting was a continuous streak in the sky.

Wells takes his time traveler an unimaginable distance into the future: 800,000 years. The world he describes is lush and beautiful, but also melancholy, like an endless Sunday afternoon. The two descendants of mankind — the child-like, passive, above-ground Eloi and the animal-like, cannibalistic, below-ground Morlocks — are just a shade too literal, if we are to accept them as the natural (d)evolution resulting from the widening gap between the wealthy, idle elite and the working classes. But that is incidental to his dying, depleted Earth, which of course poses the question of what exactly the point of everything is, if this is how we end up.

Wells takes us even further into the future, to Earth’s ultimate demise, where a bloated, red sun fills the sky over a lifeless beach. His descriptions are vivid enough to make the reader feel as if we have accompanied the Time Traveler to our planet’s inevitable end.
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LibraryThing member phaga
I loved Wells' vision of the future of humanity. Looking at society today it's easy to see how Wells came to his conclusions. This book seems even more relevant today, and I think Wells knew that. He knew we would continue our quest for contentedness and thus wrote a book that will remain timeless
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so long as we remain clueless.
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LibraryThing member baswood
Although H G Well was not the first novelist to explore the paradox of time travel (Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court had been published nine years earlier) it was the among the first to be centred on the mechanics of time travel and the invention of a time machine. It
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was certainly the most popular of the time travel books and has been seen as launching a new sub genre of Science fiction, not bad for an author,
who had published War of the Worlds in the same year.

The Time Machine does not have the same emotional impact as War of the Worlds, its canvas is smaller in both form and subject matter. It is more of a short story or novella and the only person in mortal danger is the Time Traveller himself. Well’s Time traveller goes into the future and so there is an immediate suspense and expectation as to what he will find. This is a deep vein of fiction writing that is still being mined today and Wells does not let his readers down with the world that he creates. 802,701.is the year the time machine first lands and an initially idyllic land is soon shown to be a world that is rapidly plunging into decay:

The Time traveller meets the Eloi a small race of people who seem not to have a care in the world as the land supplies all their needs, but they soon prove to be vacuous in the extreme and when the Time travellers Time machined is captured by the Morlocks who live underground a battle for survival begins. Wells’s adventure story is colourful and fast paced as he lays a template for many such stories that will follow his into publication, however there is more to this novel than a straight forward adventure story. Wells ruminates on how the two races had come into being and what pointers there were in Victorian England as why this should be so:

“Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people - due no doubt to the increasing refinement of their education and the widening gulf between them and the rude violence of the poor - …So in the end above ground you must have the Haves and below ground the Have-nots, the workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour…

“So, as I see it, the Upper-world man had drifted towards his feeble prettiness and the Underworld to mere mechanical industry”


As in War of the Worlds, Wells’s depiction of Victorian England is beautifully done. At the start of the story we are introduced to the Time Traveller: a gentleman scientist and his dinner guests: professional gentlemen and journalists who will need to be convinced of the efficacy of the Time Machine. Wells brings these scenes to life and the experiment holds our attention, until the real story kicks off.

There is much to enjoy here and although the bare bones of this story have served to fuel so many novels since it was published in1898, this one still holds up. Wells’s writing is very good, the novella is nicely balanced and so I would rate it as a 4 star read.
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LibraryThing member ctpress
This visionary and imaginative story held me in suspense from page one. A gloomy and dystopian view of the future. Forget 1984 or 2000-whatever. Here we are in the future with a capital F. In the year 802,700 - and later in the novel in the words of Buzz Lightyear: To infinity and beyond.

I kept
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thinking of the teletubbies when The Time Traveller described the upper-class Elois. I had a hard time imagining the Morlocks - but creepy creatures they were no doubt.

I liked the way he slowly discovers the horrifying truth. That the happy-care-free-dreamlike existence with no work, no illness is not what it seems. I was reminded of the soma in Brave New World.
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LibraryThing member Stormrose
2/20 (a shorter book)
Surprisingly, given that I am an avid science fiction fan, I've never read Wells; and all I can say for having read him for the first time: I want to read more.
Wells' technique is quite brilliant; his imagination is vivid; and you can see his ideas on humanity leaking out
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from the pages. I love the unnamed narrator, and the unnamed patrons of the Time Travelers dinner party; it's quite an interesting touch. The descriptions of the future - particularly as The Time Traveler heads away from the Eloi and the Morlocks to the very end of time - are evokative and haunting. It's a book that is to be experienced.
Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member Stevil2001
It's been a long time since I read this; it might be the only one of Wells's 1890s scientific romances I didn't have cause to reread at some point during graduate school. But here I am at last, and I'm glad I did. It's depressingly easy, sometimes, to forget how brilliant H.G. Wells was during the
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1890s. Not only does he invent the genre we now calls "science fiction" by looking at the stories around him (time travel narrative, utopian narrative, future-war narrative) and figuring out how they work and then outdoing them all,* and not only does he have a better grasp on what science actually is than all his contemporaries, but he's just a really good writer. Like, there's some seriously gripping stuff when the Time Traveller fights the Morlocks, and Wells's eye for detail is great. That final sequence, with the Time Traveller on the beach of the dying Earth under a dying son, is a haunting image that I have remembered since reading this book in childhood.

One thing that struck me this time out was the scale of it all, and how inconceivable it really is. The Time Traveller ends up in the year 802,701 A.D. We currently think that homo sapiens evolved around 200,000 years ago; in 1895, things were a little less certain, and some thought the species might go back to the Pliocene (which ended 2.5 million years ago) or even the Miocene (which ended over 5 million years ago). Still, the gap between the Time Traveller's native period and the future era he travels to is longer than recorded history-- and yet he's constantly trying to figure out how this future world descends from his contemporary society. That's ridiculous, but I'm pretty sure it's the Time Traveller's mistake, not Wells's. One mustn't overlook that this is a very mediated story (the narrator is telling us a tale that the Time Traveller told him, so our access to what actually happened is pretty distant). The Time Traveller is constantly projecting narratives onto events that turn out to be false, though he always thinks that this one that he's currently operating under, this one is right... up until it's proved wrong. He has little self-awareness; no matter how long he's among the Eloi, for example, he seems to keep expecting Weena to act like a human of his home era. Anyway, it's patently absurd to find an answer for the biological divisions of the year 802,701 in the class divisions of 1895; he wouldn't look for an answer to the problems of the Victorian era in the events of 798,912 B.C, and yet he does the opposite.

He can't help it: we like to impose our narrative on history, and many of our narratives are nationalistic. (And we see in The War of the Worlds and The War in the Air evidence of Wells's obsession with the dangers of nationalistic narratives.) I was reminded of "England, Long and Long Ago," a piece on geological history from an 1860 issue of All the Year Round. As you can tell from the title, it makes this history of geology a history of England, even though the time of the iguanodon was 125 million years ago, long before "England" has any meaningful existence. We impose our narratives on history, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the museum; there's an 1862 issue of All the Year Round that shows how the narrative of "England, Long and Long Ago" has been concretized in the form of "Owen's Museum." Of course, Wells shows how pointless this all is: when the Time Traveller goes to visit the museum to discover the story of the future, there's nothing for him there to discover. The museum is useless as a record of history, because 800,000 years is more than any human being or human institution can cope with. But the Time Traveller doesn't see this for what it is, and keeps trying to impose a familiar Victorian narrative on events that don't allow for it. But the fact that the span of evolutionary history wrecked this museum makes me think that Wells saw what his protagonist did not.

This, of course, raises the issue of what else Wells saw that the Time Traveller did not. I mentioned earlier that the narrator is always expecting the Eloi in the general and Weena in particular to act more human than they actually do. The touch of the Eloi he finds attractive; the touch of the Morlocks he finds repulsive. He sees the Morlocks as brutes and monsters, but it is the Eloi who do not tend their children, leaving them to fend for themselves. The Eloi are beautiful... but they have little else that convinces you of their humanity. Meanwhile, the Morlocks are cunning and possess intelligence and curiosity. But what if he's just projecting a narrative onto events again: the Eloi are beautiful and therefore good, while the Morlocks are hideous and therefore bad. Because of the influence of the George Pál film, no doubt, I always imagine that at the novel's end, the Time Traveller has returned to the future to help the Eloi make a go at it... But reading it this time, I started to wonder: What if he was backing the wrong side?

* Of course, Wells has to explain how his take is better than others'; the narrator specifically states that he has no guide in the future world, unlike in all those other utopian books you read.
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LibraryThing member Crazymamie
This book was originally published in 1895, and, pardon the pun, it stands the test of time. Although the writing style is one you will recognize if you have read anything by say, Henry Rider Haggard or Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first person narration of the story still is adequate enough to pull
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you in and gives it the feel of an adventure being told to you orally.

The first two chapters set up the story that is to be told by the Time Traveler, a scientist who has built a time machine capable of traveling into the future and back again. By chapter three, the Time Traveler is relating his tale of traveling a great distance into the future and finding that humanity has become two distinct species - one, the Eloi dwell above ground and are happy if not overly intelligent beings. The other species, the Morlocks, dwells below ground and represent a sinister working class. Excited by his success in time travel, the Traveler leaves behind his time machine to explore the new world before him only to find upon his return that his machine is nowhere in sight. Suspecting foul play, the Traveler realizes that it is very likely that he will have to venture into the underground world in order to retrieve his invention and travel back home.

This story is cleverly told, but fell just a bit flat for me. I loved the vision that Wells shared in his futuristic tale, but wanted the Time Traveler to be smarter. Still, often people who are gifted in one area are lacking in another. I wanted a man who was intelligent enough to build a machine capable of traveling into the future to also be capable of forward thinking. He should realize that if he intends to travel into the future, he should pack provisions and think through some contingency plans before actually taking off. However, I could also see the mad scientist type who got caught up in the linear thought progression of time travel without stopping to think about practical matters.

I think this book was perhaps supposed to be more of a study in societal development than a sci-fi tale, but it provides both and is worth the time it takes to explore it. I loved the museums that the Time Traveler encounters and was impressed by Wells ability to tell a story that can still stand up today, more than a century after he wrote it.

"And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from the present moment."
"My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. That is just where the whole world has gone wrong. We are always getting away from the present moment. Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave. Just as we should travel down if we began our existence fifty miles above the earth's surface."
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LibraryThing member ejp1082
I'm not sure that this is a great novel in its own right, or that it's held up well over time (pun intended, har har).

The most interesting aspect to me was the fact that Wells devoted a good portion of the books opening to explaining the idea of time travel itself. Not how the time machine itself
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worked - Wells skillfully avoids any attempt to explain that, to his credit. But rather, he presumably felt that "time travel" would be so alien a concept to his readers that it warranted a lengthy exposition. This more than anything illustrates just how groundbreaking the novel was. But while interesting on a meta level, it's a bit dull for a modern reader to plow through.

It was also interesting on this level: all science fiction is inherently about the present, and in this case, it said a lot about late 19th century London. Wells took Darwin's (then still new-ish) ideas about evolution, and invented a fictitious time traveler so he could take them to a logical conclusion and use the story as a warning and bit of social commentary. Again, to the modern reader it seems a bit ho hum, but it's fascinating on a meta level.

We're all familiar with the basic elements of the story. The time machine, the Eloi, the Morlocks. But surprisingly, that's about all there is to the novel - he makes a trip to the future where he discovers them (spurred by his machine being stolen), and there's little else in terms of story. Wells offers very vivid and captivating descriptions of the world, but there's not that much action. Further, the narrator seems kind of detached from it all, despite living through the experiences. There's no exploration of some of the implications of time travel, only this thinly veiled warning about the future.

In short, if one is interested in a science fiction classic, it's a worthwhile read. But as a novel in of itself, it falls fairly flat.
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LibraryThing member soylentgreen23
A book that works on level upon level upon level. The first is the obvious - of the horror felt by the traveller as he reaches a future in which hope has been replaced with mind-dulling comfort and ease. Culture has been forgotten; the dark side of the world is precisely that, as if there is no
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grey: it lives underground.

On another level, this is the story of repression. The Eloi, the people who live in the light and merrily go from day to day, are really repressed, and in turn repress, those that live underground, the dreadful Morlocks. Wisely, Wells leaves much of the moralising to the reader.
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LibraryThing member DragonFreak
The Time Traveler just invented the first time machine and accidently transports himself into year 802,701 A.D. In this very distant future he meets two different kinds of people: The Eloi who are friendly, peaceful, and have everything. And then there are the Morlocks who are live below ground and
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vicious. Along the way, The Time Traveler saves a small female Eloi from drowning named Weena and together they travel underground so he can meet the Morlocks without knowing their true nature.

I didn’t enjoy this book at all. There wasn’t anything that excited me, and it just made me feel like I wasted a bunch of time. And none of it seemed very realistic. Usually science fiction has a hint of realism in it, but it’s so far into the future, I don’t see any of those events happening. Besides that, the plot wasn't too great, I didn't care abou the characters, and for such a short book, so underwelming. By I will give Wells credit that he explained how the time machine works very, very well.

Rating: One and a Half Stars *1/2
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LibraryThing member DavidGraves
Wonderful and focused exposition, exploring humankind's possible futures with steely, horror-tinged realism. Not only an entertaining read, but visionary in scope. A science-fiction masterpiece.
LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C
This struck me as unoriginal, which I know is completely unfair--it's that this is the one that created the mold and since 1895 we've had a bazillion time travel novels. This zipped past pretty quickly--it's only 32,000 words. Not to get into spoilers, but I've read that Wells is a socialist and
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it's obvious in how he pounds out his theories about humanity's future, which no doubt is part of my cordial dislike for this novel.

Another part of why it didn't for me have much impact though is that the style itself was distancing. It's the first person narration of an unnamed friend of the unnamed "Time Traveller" who tells his tale to a group of friends after his time in two far future periods: the year 802,701 and 30 million years later where he watches a dying Earth. In the first far future time period he meets the child-like Eloi, who live in the Upper World, which seems like a paradise--and the bestial Morlocks who live Underground. The only one of them who is given an individual identity is Weena, a female Eloi the Time Traveller rescues--she doesn't so much get a line of dialogue though.

I give the book snaps for it's seminal function in science fiction and because it went by quickly without my being tempted to put it down, but color me unimpressed.
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LibraryThing member akhwaja
The time machine by: H.G Wells
The time machine by H.G Wells is one of the best books I’ve read all summer. It was so interesting I finished it in 2 days, because I couldn’t put the book down. I loved how the author, H.G Wells, described every detail, when he went to the future. I also like the
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twist that happened, such as, when he lost the time machine and had to fight morlocks and get his time machine back, and also his interpretation of the future was so different from my interpretation, and what another person would think of the future. The most difficult part I had when reading this book was figuring out the point of view, and what exactly is happening. The reason why I couldn’t really find out the point of view is because, there was sort of like two parts of the narration, one where I’m hearing what the time traveler is saying, and one where I’m actually the time traveler, but then I noticed the quotes and could identify that the point of view was third. I also got a little confused on the story line, because when the time traveler went in time, I felt like he was going into the past, but he was actually going into the future so that’s why I got a little confused, but later on in the book I understood what was actually happening. The setting of this book was also very interesting, because it was placed in the 1800’s-1900’s and this was about the time period when people were actually talking about time traveling and when the question arise if time traveling was possible. The setting itself was mostly place into the future at 801,775 AD. The theme of this book was so different from what I thought it would be about, I picture this book to be about time traveling where there are flying cars and really cool and smart people, but this book was almost the exact opposite. There were no people, there were these little pink things, called elloi, and everything was all run down and broken, nothing really cool, no flying cars, just a really big statue, and a big building where everyone lived together. I really thought the story line was interesting though, such as, how the time traveler lost his time machine, and had to fight morlocks and defeat them and get his time machine back, and how he was friends with a elloi girl, who really helped him. Overall I bielve that this book was really interesting, because it had a lot of twist and turns within the book, which made me want to keep reading it and never put it down.
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LibraryThing member gaillamontagne
I chose this book because it was read by Scott Brick. Love his voice. I have seen the movie several times starring Rod Taylor. I wanted to know how it was originally written. Older authors like H.G. Wells have a wordy style of writing which can be difficult for the contemporary listener. To my
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surprise, Wells wasn't just writing a sensational sy-fy story, he is making a statement about the tendencies of man to degenerate as opposed to the Star Trek theory of man evolving up to a more civilized life form. The "time traveler", as the main character is referenced, returns to his own time from his journey into the future and relates to his listeners exactly what he saw. The traveler found man de-evolved into a split society where the stronger prey on the weak and ignorant. Worse yet, man denigrates into a species of animal that doesn't help its own and/ or, turns to cannibalism for a food source without any morality.
This futuristic world has no God, no laws, no morals, and all of man has become a farmed animal in the ruins of old civilizations with "farmers" living below ground who eat those who live above ground . Wells' basic message is that man is de-evolving.He makes no mention of God. As he goes further into the future in his time machine, after escaping from the Morlocks, he is shocked when he sees the earth in a state of being, "null and void", giving a message of no hope. This is not the end- of- civilization message which I personally believe.( Revelation Chapter 22 is the real end of History.)
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LibraryThing member atimco
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells is a fascinating story of one man's excursion into the distant future. Called only "the Time Traveller" by our unnamed narrator, this man witnesses the seeming paradise which our Earth has become. Rich, lush, and without the natural evils we grapple with,
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nevertheless this Edenic world has a dark side. The human race has evolved into two distinct groups, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi are surface-dwellers, diminutive, beautiful, and weak — victims of their own ingenuity, which removed all need for invention and intelligence. The Morlocks, dwelling underground, are much more sinister, and eventually the Time Traveller discovers the truth. They are cannibals, preying upon the Eloi when darkness falls.

It is fascinating to see how Wells explores the problems of capitalism and labor, the upper classes and the worker toiling for the ease of others. The divide is brought into the physical realm, with the Eloi on top and the Morlocks being banished to the subterranean regions, where society tends to put its less ornamental, more utilitarian functions. Indeed, the Time Traveller even calls the Eloi and Morlocks the Haves and the Have-nots. The warning is clear: if they continue to live in indolence and ease, the upper classes will become weak and helpless, a prey for the lower classes who are strengthened (though also made brutish) by the work imposed upon them.

I didn't know quite what to think of this book. Wells refers to Darwin with respect, but he takes a grimmer view of man's evolutionary "progress," seeing the seeds of self-destruction in our very struggle to tame the natural world. If we have nothing left to strive and work for, will not our natural abilities atrophy and eventually abandon us completely? In Wells' vision of the future, our old problems of societal inequities have not been solved, though we have solved the physical ills of our world. We have become either helpless of brutish. It seems that despite his evolutionary leanings, Wells held an accurate view of human nature.

So this is The Time Machine, the pioneering work in the genre of time-travel fiction. An interesting read, but not a comfortable one, and thankfully rather short. At least I finally understand why jokes about time travel often reference crystals.
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LibraryThing member Olivermagnus
This classic science fiction novel opens with the Time Traveler, explaining to his Victorian peers, his plans to travel in time. The next scene is a dinner party a week later with the narrator and a few of the Time Traveler's previous guests. The Time Traveler enters the room in terrible shape.
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After he has cleaned up he begins to tell them of his trip in time. The Traveler tells them that he went to the year 802701 A.D. The England of the distant future is a beautiful place, almost a Utopia, but civilization is in majestic ruin. He first encounters the Eloi, a race of pretty, vacuous beings descended from humans. All other animals are apparently extinct, and the vegetarian Eloi have every need mysteriously provided for.

The Morlocks are hunched-over, pale ape-like creatures with glowing cat-like eyes that live in elaborate underground cities. They quickly steal the time machine and drag it into their territory. Though the time traveler clearly understands the Eloi’s fear of this other race, he has no choice but to pursue his machine underground. The world of the Morlocks is completely devoid of light and the time traveler’s venture underground is one of the most horrific moments in classic literature.

The Time Machine is a social doom prophecy. This was the book that really propelled Wells’s career as an author writing fantasy-like visions with a scientific approach. Wells created a new path for his career, but also for a genre of writing. Some of Wells’s writing will feel dated to modern readers, but it is worth bearing in mind that he was writing the beginning books of modern Science-Fiction. Later authors, including even Wells himself, would go on to improve on the foundation laid here. So many of the questions addressed by time traveling narratives originate with Wells, and for this reason The Time Machine is essential reading for any science-fiction fan.
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LibraryThing member john257hopper
I thought a re-read of this seminal science fiction work was long overdue, as I hadn't read it for nearly 20 years. It deserves all the accolades it has received. It is a taut and crisp narrative of only a little over 100 pages, but within it contains many of the basic science fiction and time
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travel ideas that have formed a huge part of subsequent literature, film and ŧelevision; plus reflective parallels on class divisions and hostility in contemporary late Victorian Britain. A novel of ideas par excellence; it is of no importance that we never find out the Time Traveller's name.
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LibraryThing member themythbookshelf
The Time Machine proved to be a lovely, albeit short, read, even for someone who isn't that much of a science fiction enthusiast, but that's probably because I haven't read much of the genre. First published first in 1895, this powerful little book shattered literary ground with a single man, the
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anonymous Time Traveller, and his "squat, ugly, and askew" machine of "brass, ebony, ivory and translucent glimmering quartz" (110). The tale is told from the perspective of one of the man's acquaintances, who is invited to dinner to hear of his adventure upon his return. Naturally, the Time Traveller's account dominates most of the book, though I found that these two contrasting perspectives complemented each other nicely.

The adventure of the Time Traveller consists more of him running around to recover his stolen time machine than anything else. The descriptions of the "post-human humans" he meets are, for this reason, limited, and so is the depth to which the landscape is explored. This read reminded me of two other works, both classics in their own right--Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies. The former vaguely resembles this work in prose and descriptive style, while the latter, in its representation of the Eloi race. The Time Traveller describes the Eloi people, who we are the ancestors of, as innocent, pure, and child-like race, having degenerated into ignorance as a result of privilege and laziness. As the traveller reflects, "there is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change" and they serve as a wonderful representation of this (97). A dangerously similar description is found in Bartolomé de las Casas' anthropological account of the natives, which is recounted from the perspective of a European missionary. (The difference, however, is that de las Casas enthusiastically viewed them as perfect receptors of the Christian religion, while here such qualities ignite the total opposite reaction).

Furthermore, as this is the first of Wells' works that I read, I'm not sure if this is his natural prose — it was elegant but a little too verbose for my taste. Nevertheless, it was acceptable because it suits the character of the Time Traveller rather perfectly. All in all, you do not have to be a sci-fi fan to appreciate this book, though I'm sure it would help.
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LibraryThing member trilliams
You're all Morlocks.
LibraryThing member Alera
The Time Machine is a short novella detailing the journey of a man who found a way to travel along the 4th dimension. It's a story about the evolution of humankind. And a story about the end of time. But more than all of that with The Time Machine, H. G. Wells managed to redefine what a science
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fiction story is. The Time Machine is not a classic because of immaculate storytelling. The novel is uneven in pacing and style. It is a classic because the common ideas, themes, and mythos of time-travel and time machines originate within these pages, and have continued to influence and captivated ever since.
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LibraryThing member goose114
A scientist asks prominent men to gather so he may explain his invention of the time machine. Not long after the men are asked again to join the scientist for dinner and when the scientist shows up he is disheveled. He explains that he has been in the future and wishes to discuss his journey with
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the men. The scientist traveled into the distant future when the human race has split into two separate species; a gentle above ground being and a second underground potentially dangerous being. When the scientist’s time machine goes missing he must locate it in order to return to his own time.

I picked up this book not knowing anything about it or H.G. Wells. I was really impressed with this novel. Wells’ dystopian world is unlike anything that I have read before. The devolution of the species echoes classism and segregation. This was a short read, but one that really got me thinking.
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LibraryThing member melydia
(unabridged audiobook read by Ralph Cosham): I was pleased to learn that this brief book is almost nothing like the 2002 movie, since that was horrible. Rather, this is the story of a man simply referred to as The Time Traveller, a native of Victorian England who spends the bulk of the story
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telling of his adventures in the year 802,701 and beyond. The reader hears things more or less secondhand and after the fact, as opposed to the more suspenseful (and much more common) everything-as-it-happens mode. Despite the extra step of disconnect from the action, this style actually adds to the realism, truly showing the future through the eyes and impressions of the Time Traveller, who can share many theories but few concrete facts. I was fascinated by the description of the world many hundreds of thousands of years hence, and even felt inspired to write my own time travel story, just for fun. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member running501
This is the story of the Time Traveler, primarily in the year 802,701 A.D. as he learns how humans have evolved into two separate, struggling "classes".

A very quick classic read. While the style of writing is quite different from modern fiction, it is easy to follow and the story is interesting
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enough that I didn't mind the style.

What I found most intriguing about this book was the expression of Wells's views at the end of the Nineteenth Century. Looking at the book in it's context shows some of the angst over industrialization and fear of where society might be headed.
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LibraryThing member JGolomb
The Time Machine is more than cool, classic sci-fi. It's more than just THE original story to include a scientific rationale to time travel. It's a story that delves into the differences and injustices of class relations. It's a story that considers a burgeoning scientific revolution. And it's a
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story that explores evolution and the fate of mankind (at the same time as the World is still grapples with Darwin's theory).

The story is quite simple. The Time Traveller (TTT - no name is given) creates a machine that's able to travel through time. TTT demonstrates, in miniature, how the machine works and then travels himself, in full scale, 800,000 years into the future. The narration is handled by The Writer (also no name is given) who witnesses the miniature demonstration and is present when TTT returns from his trip to the future.

TTT finds himself in a future inhabitated by the child-like Eloi living a vegetarian and almost Luddite existence. The Eloi are innocent, fun-loving, sympathetic simpletons. When his time machine disappears, TTT explores this future land and ultimately discovers the Eloi's underground-dwelling symbiotic cousins - the Morlocks. Symbollically, the Eloi serve the role of aristocracy, patrician, or white collar; while the Morlocks serve the role as commonor, plebian, proletariat or blue collar. The Morlocks are carnivores (you can guess where they get their meat), and industrial, who can only see in the dark and are afraid of fire and the light.

After battle the Morlocks and losing his one Eloi friend, Weena, TTT recovers his Time Machine and launches himself further into the future.

The image of a desolate, grim far-future inhabited only by large crab-like creatures is as haunting and memorable to me as an adult as it was when I first read it 20+ years ago. The Signet edition of The Time Machine includes one additional future vignette that was edited out of the definitive edition of the story. This additional scene precedes TTT's visit to the crab-beach. He finds what he believes to be the last vestiges of humanity having taken the shape of large grey formless rabbits who are hunted by enormous caterpillars. These few additional pages evoke the same creepiness as the beach crabs and are a nice complement to the original story.

TTT relates his journey at a dinner party at his home. We view his adventure and discourse through The Writer's detailed account of TTT's return. English society is represented at the dinner party and, naturally, nobody quite believes the tale.

Modern scifi stalwart Greg Bear writes an introduction to the Signet addition and provides informative context to the story, it's place in writing history, and background on H.G. Wells as well as his place in the authorial pantheon.

If you've never read The Time Machine before, I strongly recommend you jump into this turn of the 19th Century classic. It's a little soft by modern comparison, but it's the original upon which so much contemporary scifi is based.
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Rating

½ (4194 ratings; 3.7)

Call number

Ebook
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