Basically, Wells is posing the question of What will man be like in the distant future? His answer is quite unlike any kind of scenario that modern readers, schooled on Star Wars, Star Trek, and the like, would come up with. He gives birth to a simple and tragic society made up of the Eloi and the Morlocks. In contrasting these two groups, he offers a critique of sorts of men in his own time. Clearly, he is worried about the gap between the rich and the poor widening in his own world and is warning his readers of the dangers posed by such a growing rift. It is most interesting to see how the Time Traveler's views of the future change over the course of his stay there. At first, he basically thinks that the Morlocks, stuck underground, have been forced to do all the work of man while the Eloi on the surface play and dance around in perpetual leisure. Later, he realizes that the truth is more complicated than that. The whole book seems to be a warning against scientific omniscience and communal living. The future human society that the Time Traveler finds is supposedly ideal--free of disease, wars, discrimination, intensive labor, poverty, etc. However, the great works of man have been lost--architectural, scientific, philosophical, literary, etc.--and human beings have basically become children, each one dressing, looking, and acting the same. The time traveler opines that the loss of conflict and change that came in the wake of society's elimination of health, political, and social issues served to stagnate mankind. Without conflict, there is no achievement, and mankind atrophies both mentally and physically.

This basic message of the novel is more than applicable today. While it is paramount that we continue to research and discover new scientific facts about ourselves and the world, we must not come to view science as a religion that can ultimately recreate the earth as an immense garden of Eden. Knowledge itself is far less important than the healthy pursuit of that knowledge. Man's greatness lies in his ability to adapt to unforeseen circumstances. Speaking only for myself, I think this novel points out the dangerousness of Communism and points to the importance of individualism--if you engineer a society in which every person is "the same" and "equal," then you have doomed that society.


A Concise Sampling of Wells' Remarkable Vision   February 13, 2004
 21 out of 25 found this review helpful

First published in 1895, THE TIME MACHINE was Wells' first novel--and it immediately established him at the forefront of writers of his era. And although Wells would go onto a very long and distinguished career that included some one hundred published books, THE TIME MACHINE remains one of his most popular novels to this day.

The story has been famous for over one hundred years. The narrator, identified only as "The Time Traveler," has created a machine capable of moving through time. He boards the machine and rushes headlong into the future--where he finds himself in the strangely utopian society of the "Eloi." But unbeknownst to the time traveler, that society is built on the back of a much darker one, the underground world of the "Morlock," who supply the Eloi's every need in order to harvest them like cattle.

Wells was an extremely didactic writer, a social reformer whose thoughts inform virtually everything he wrote. In many respects THE TIME MACHINE is the perfect example of this, drawing the reader in through an exciting story that Wells turns into a social parable. Born under the rigid class system of Victorian England, Wells had quite a lot to say about the benefits and evils of such a social system, and his thoughts on the subject are extremely clear here--as are his thoughts about the then-new theory of natural selection. The result is an elegant but often fearsome portrait of how class systems and natural selection might combine to create a uniquely horrific civilization.

Wells would return to these themes again and again, perhaps most obviously in THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU and THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON--both excellent novels in their own right. But if you are new to Wells, THE TIME MACHINE is an excellent beginning, for it offers a sampling of his mind in remarkably concise fashion. Strongly recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer


A review of THE TIME MACHINE   November 3, 2000
 14 out of 16 found this review helpful

The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells is an unconventional book, which is both intriguing and entertaining. When I read the book I expected a short novel about various insignificant complications of time travel, but was given a tale full of theories and speculations about the evolution of human beings.

In The Time Machine the time traveler is recounting his adventure into the unknown that we call the future. Thousands of years in the future he discovers that the human race has evolved into two different kinds, the Morlocks and the Eloi. The Morlocks are nocturnal creatures who live underground and surface during the night, only to prey on the defenseless Eloi. The Eloi, once living comfortably as the ruling race, have degenerated into a simple group of beings that live life effortlessly and without substance. The time traveler describes his interactions with the Morlocks and the Eloi in a thought-provoking manner, creating a highly enjoyable novel.

The Time Machine suggests many controversial ideas such as the extreme degeneration of the human race. Not only is it interesting to learn Wells' theories, but his writing caused me to create some of my own thoughts about the possibility of evolution. The open ending to the book also leaves a story for the mind to explore. Facts are not forced upon the reader, but rather he is left to make his own assumptions of the ending of the book. The story is left somewhat unfinished, yet it comes to adequate closure, so that the reader does not feel a lack of conclusion in the novel.

I was thoroughly impressed by the concise yet engaging writing by Wells, and believe that this classic would be a necessity in the personal library of any fan of good literature.


Past and present masterpiece   November 12, 2000
 14 out of 14 found this review helpful

This is the little number that started it all. For the English-speaking world (some translations of Verne possibly aside), science fiction begins with the four brief, brilliant novels published by H G Wells in the 1890s. The War of the Worlds is a still-unsurpassed alien invasion story; The Invisible Man one of the first world-dominating mad scientist tales; and The Island of Dr Moreau a splendidly misanthropic story of artificial evolution and genetic modification. But The Time Machine came first, launching Wells' career in literature; and, after just over a century, there still isn't anything nearly like it. A Victorian inventor travels to the year 802701, where the class divisions of Wells' day have evolved two distinct human races: the helpless, childlike and luxurious Eloi and the monstrous, mechanically adept and subterranean Morlocks. Predictably, the film version turned them into the usual Good Guys and Bad Guys, though it's still worth seeing, particularly for its conception of the Time Machine itself - a splendid piece of Victorian gadgetry. The book, despite its sociological-satirical premise, is rather more complex in its treatment of the opposed races, and the Time Traveller's voyage ends, not with them, but still further in the future, with images of a dead sun and a dark earth populated only by scuttling, indefinite shadows. As in the other three novels, too, the premise of the story is carefully worked out and clearly explained - a discipline largely beyond science fiction today, in which time travel, invading aliens or whatever are simply taken for granted as convenient genre props and automatic thought-nullifiers. After more than a century, The Time Machine is still waiting for the rest of us to catch up.


Future Shock   December 15, 1999
 13 out of 24 found this review helpful

This was the first book I read by HG Wells, at the age of 12. (I saw the film first.) After taking a trip into the future, a Time Traveller returns to the 19th century and tells his colleagues what he saw.

In the distant future there is nothing, not a trace, of our world left. The Time Travller discovers a new society and finds that we have evolved into a puny, ineffectual race called Eloi. At night he discovers the other half of the society, the hideous, carniverous Morlocks. The Eloi live simple lives and play in the sun. They are food for the Morlocks, who live underground, operating machinery. The Time Traveller goes even further into the future, to a depressing world where the sun is dying and monstrous creatures roam the surface.

Getting away from the point for a moment, there was once a "Doctor Who" story called "Timelash". In that story the Doctor travels back in time and meets a young writer called Herbert, who accompanies the Doctor on a journey to the future on another planet. There are monsters called Morlox. At the end of the story the young writer gives the Doctor one of his cards, which has the name HG Wells. The story implied that HG Wells' novel was inspired by the Doctor! But in reality "The Time Machine" paved the way for "Doctor Who", one of my favourite childhood shows. So we owe a lot to Wells.

Time travel looks like a fun thing to do but sometimes it's best if the future is left unknown. Would you want to know your own future and find it's not what you hoped for?