Review: The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells

The Time Machine 
H. G. Wells
1895

An Alexandrine Couplet About The Future

In the future, rich people are super lazy

                    then poor people eat them—and other stuff happens

First, this book is where the term “time machine” came from. And that alone means it’s made a huge contribution to the world we live in.

The plot isn't concerned with time travel paradoxes, as the genre typically is now. It's all about traveling into the future. An aristocratic inventor in the industrial revolution creates a time machine. He goes forward 800,805 years to see how awesome the future became. One can only presume he wanted to fly a jetpack to the Giant Robot Fighting Championship.

Or at least take a monorail.

Instead he finds the Eloi, a group of simple minded, elegant people who live in buildings that were once futuristic. They pretty much eat fruit and frolic all day.

Then he finds his time machine is stolen (duh duh DUH!)

Because the future doesn’t have Neighborhood Watch.

Turns out, the machine was stolen by these Cro-Magnon like monsters who live in caves and are super good at maintaining and cleaning machinery, but don’t really have any true intelligence or imagination. They’re called the Morlocks, because that sounds seriously sinister.

Points For Alliteration!

To make it worse, the Time Traveler learns that the Morlocks feed and clean up after the Eloi, and then eat them! This book is early sci-fi and early dystopian future. H. G. Wells was explaining how society was making serious mistakes. This book’s theory says that as there are more and more people, the poor working class (who increasingly do menial work in factories) are going to end up living in very cheap real estate, probably underground, while the rich will live more and more comfortably and idely off the poor folks’ labor. Darwinian evolution would take these two groups in different directions – the poor would evolve to favor physical strength, dexterity, and the skills used for machining parts, working assembly lines, and other mundane tasks. Higher order thinking would become a hindrance since it will only drive them crazy under those circumstances, and they’d slowly lose it. The rich, living in splendor, would eventually devolve as well; their strength would give way to litheness while things like intelligence and inventiveness would become emotional hindrances. They’d become more and more pretty but also more and more useless, live only to look good while consuming, and would eventually rely on their handlers to do virtually everything for them. The masses, having been conditioned to see them as important, support them despite the fact that they contribute nothing of value.

Ek! The Eloi Are Already Here

 

No really, reread the previous two sentences. The Eloi are already here.


Eventually, because they’ve been separated so completely into distinct classes, these two groups aren’t even biologically the same species. The passive Eloi (rich folks) become the only source of food for the Morlocks (poor folks). The Eloi devolve into quaint, lowing cattle kept comfortable by the Morlocks, who devolve into brutish ranchers. Both groups are okay with this setup because neither has the intellectual or emotional abality to think hard about it or question it.

The Time Traveler and the Morlocks spend the rest of the novel playing cat and mouse as he tries to get his machine back. In the end he wins and goes way more into the future, far enough to see the world die as the sun goes supernova, with the last life forms on Earth being these giant, terrifying crab like creatures.

The future has a surprising lack of jetpacks.

The Time Traveler makes it back to 1895 to tell the story to his friends at a dinner party. He brings some flowers a pretty future girl gave him, and they seem to accept this as good enough evidence that he’s not bat shit crazy. The next day, he goes on a new time expedition and never returns.

So the novel is about time travel, and dystopian future, and adventuring, but it’s purpose (it's telos, if you will) is social commentary. It’s about the fear of the Industrial Revolution and the fear of returning to an agrarian way of life. The book shows the pitfalls of capitalism and how Communism isn’t any better. It shows how people who work too hard will be forced to suffer but also the downsides of having a comfortable, indolent life. The book is both captivating and terrifying because it gives legitimate reason to be afraid of everything.

These are the cold, clammy hands of the future reaching out for everyone.

As it turns out, H. G. Wells wasn’t such a hopeful guy, and his fiction was often pessimistic about the future. But this is a fast-paced story for its time, and really adventurous for being as full of social commentary as it is. The protagonist is likeable in a rich white guy way, and The Time Machine is one of most important works of early science fiction.*

So there you have it. 

And now, other famous time machines:

Phone Booth #1: Dr. Who’s Tardis

Phone Booth #2: Bill And Ted’s Excellent Phone Booth

Brought to you by The Future George Carlin.

Van Damme’s Time Travel Police Car from Time Cop.

It’s such a forgettable movie, but it keeps traveling back to remind you.

The machine Bruce Willis gets forced into in 12 Monkeys

Making Time Travel less sexy since 1995.

Austin Powers’ Time Traveling Pimp Mobile

Because he’s bringing sexy back.

The Terminator Franchise’s Naked Time Bubble

Because someone said,

“Let’s travel back in time and rebuild this thing so that everyone has to be 
naked!”

I can’t say I blame them – it’s exactly what I’d do.

Hermione’s Time Turner

Why isn’t she smart enough to go back in time and just kill Voldemort?

It’s the plot hole that cannot be named!

The Flash’s Cosmic Treadmill

Yes, this is a thing,

and it still makes more sense than Hot Tub Time Machine.

And For The Win:

Plus, this thing’s future has hover boards.

*Early Science Fiction Note: H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and a guy named Hugo are collectively referred to as the Fathers Of Science Fiction. Wells was interested in using sci-fi as a vehicle to discuss ideas, philosophies, and people, whereas Verne was into hard sci-fi and the possibilities derived from advancements in true science and research. Essentially, if Wells had written The Time Machine, 150 pages would have been devoted to who builds it, how it works and the science of time travel, and maybe 15 would have been about the future he actually went to.

Also, when I was looking for pics for this entry, I came across this spectacular poster for The Terminator, and I had to include it. Cheers!