The Time Machine
The Time Machine is a novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1895, later made into two films of the same name. This book is generally credited with the introduction of time travel using a time machine.
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
The Book
Wells had considered the notion of time travel before, in an earlier (but unpublished) story titled The Chronic Argonauts. He had thought of using some of this material in a series of articles in the Pall Mall Gazette, until the publisher asked him if he could instead do a serial novel on the same theme; Wells readily agreed, and was paid 100 pounds on its publication in 1896.
The novel's protagonist is an amateur scientist simply called the Time Traveller (we never learn his real name, though, tantalizingly, he remarks that he wrote it in the dust in an abandoned museum in the distant future.) Having demonstrated to friends that time is a fourth dimension, and that suitable apparatus can move back and forth in this fourth dimension, he constructs a larger machine capable of carrying himself, and sets off.
His journey forward in time takes him to the year 802701 AD where he finds an apparently peaceful, pastoral, Daoist future, filled with happy, simple humans who call themselves the Eloi. This appearance turns out to be deceptive. The Traveller soon discovers that the class structure of his own time has in fact persisted, and the human race has diverged into two branches. The wealthy, leisure classes appear to have evolved into the ineffectual, not very bright Eloi he has already seen; but the downtrodden working classes have evolved (or devolved) into the bestial Morlocks, cannibal hominids resembling albino apes, who toil underground maintaining the machinery that keep the Eloi – their flocks – docile and plentiful. Both species, having adapted to their routines, are of distinctly sub-human intelligence.
Soon after his arrival he rescues Weena, a female Eloi he found drowning in a river. Much to his surprise she is grateful to him and insists on following him. After some adventures and the eventual death of Weena at the hands of the Morlocks, the narrator returns to his machine and travels into the far future. There he sees the last few living things on a dying Earth, before returning to his time to tell his story to friends. Then he attempts to time travel again and disappears forever into time.
The story reflects Wells' political views; he was a committed communist, and the narrator reasons that the state he sees is the outcome of capitalist class structures. The novel may also have influenced the movie Metropolis. He probably did not see it as an accurate portrayal of the future.
The Time Machine is in the public domain in the United States, Canada, and Australia, but does not enter the public domain in the European Union until January 1, 2017 (1946 death of author + 70 years + end of calendar year).
The text of the novel is available .
An extract from the 11th chapter of the serial published in the The New Review (May 1895) was not included in the book version, as it was thought too violent. This portion of the story has been published elsewhere was The Grey Man.
The Grey Man begins with the Traveller waking up in his Time Machine after escaping the Morlocks. He finds himself in the distant future of an Earth that is unrecognizable, seeing kangaroo-like hopping creatures being attacked and eaten by a giant centipede that comes out of the ground. It is implied that these are the future forms of the Eloi and Morlocks, respectively.
Film versions
George Pal (who also made a famous "modernized" version of Wells' The War of the Worlds) filmed The Time Machine 1960. This is more of an adventure film than the book was; also the division of mankind results from mutations induced by a nuclear war during the twentieth century, and the Eloi speak English. The film was remade in 2002, starring Guy Pearce and Jeremy Irons and directed by Wells' great-grandson Richard Cowper, first published in 1976. It features a "manuscript" which reports the Time Traveller's activities after the end of the original novel. According to his "manuscript" the Time Traveller disappeared because his Time Machine had been damaged by the Morlocks without him knowing it. He only found out when it stopped operating during his next attempted time travel. He found himself on August 27, 1665, in London during the outbreak of the Black Death. The rest of the novel is devoted to his efforts to repair the Time Machine and leave this time period before getting infected with the disease. He also has an encounter with Robert Hooke. He eventually dies of the disease on September 20, 1665. The story gives a list of subsequent owners of the manuscript till 1976. It also gives the name of the Time Traveller as Robert James Pensley, born to James and Martha Pensley in 1850 and disappearing without trace on June 18, 1894.
- Morlock Night by K.W. Jeter, first published in 1979. It is an odd steampunk novel in which the Morlocks, having studied the Traveller's machine, duplicate it and invade Victorian London
- The Space Machine by Christopher Priest, first published in 1976. Because of the movement of planets, stars and galaxies, for a time machine to stay in one spot on Earth as it travels through time, it must also follow the Earth's trajectory through space. In Priest's book, the hero damages the Time Machine, and arrives on Mars, just before the start of the invasion described in The War of the Worlds. H.G. Wells himself appears as a minor character.
- The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter, first published in 1995. This sequel was officially authorised by the Wells estate to mark the centenary of the original's publication. In its wide-ranging narrative, the Traveller's desire to return and rescue Weena is thwarted by the fact that he has changed history (by telling his tale to his friends, one of whom published the account). With a Morlock (in the new history, the Morlocks are intelligent and cultured) he travels through the multiverse as increasingly complicated timelines unravel around him, eventually meeting mankind's far future descendants, whose ambition is to travel into the multiverse of multiverses. Like much of Baxter's work, this is definitely hard science fiction; it also includes many nods to the prehistory of Wells's story in the names of characters and chapters.
Just to entangle reality and fiction further, H. G. Wells also appears as a character, aboard his own time machine in 1979 film Time After Time and the 1990s television series The
|Wikiquote has a collection of
