The Time Machine by H.G. Wells: Review
Book: The Time Machine. Date of Publication: January 1, 1895. Pages: 118. Publisher: Signet Classics. Genre: Science Fiction
Science fiction, no matter how forward thinking, is always based in the world of today. The Three Body Problem, pinnacle of hard sci-fi as it is, is rooted in the scars of the Cultural Revolution. Aniara, the grand space opera, begins with ecological crisis ennui and climate change fatalism. The Time Machine, as innovative as it was, is also best read in the context of its time.
When I took European history in high school there was one spread in our old musty textbooks that lasted in my mind. It had a little picture of a famous painting. Meadows of green grass, rolling hills, and the quaint cottages of a classic English landscape. In the background an eerie red-orange cloud like a scar represented the town mine. When the Industrial Revolution first got underway many artists were of the opinion that its infrastructure disfigured the country’s natural beauty. So came depictions of mills, mines, and factories as the very entrances to Hell itself. William Blake famously called them those “dark satanic mills”. Reformers would later decry hazardous working conditions, 16-hour days spent without sun or fresh air, and child labor. H.G. Wells, a noted socialist and activist, took the ills of his time and imagined them at their most extreme conclusion.
The Time Traveller uses his glorious machine of ivory and mahogany to visit the year 800,000 A.D. There he meets two disparate, vaguely human populations. The Eloi are descended from the rich and privileged. They live a carefree life eating fruits and frolicking, having regressed to a childlike level of intelligence. They are terrified of the dark. The Morlocks live underground and only venture out at night. They are descended from the underclass. Their diet consists of mysterious raw meat which you can probably guess the origin of.
The plot is not too special by today’s standards but it’s neat to read as the first novel to coin the concept of a time machine, the first ambitious enough to write the unfathomably distant future. The first to imagine a world where sentient life has come to an end, unable to sustain itself in the dying light of the sun. This is a concept that terrified me as a kid so it feels almost nostalgic to revisit it now.
And it’s short too!
