عن غروب البشرية نتحدث
عن البشر عندما صار طولهم 140سم
وجوههم ناعمة..لافرق بين النساءوالرجال
أصبح الجميع أقرب الأطفال شكلا و موضوعا
كسالي غارقون في الراحةو لا يخافون سوى الظلام



اندثرت البيوت و انتهى نظام الاسرة
الجميع يعيشون في مباني ضخمة
لا يوجد تعليم
او تجارة
او منافسة
او حروب
اذن فهي الجنة

..لا بل هي أقرب لحظيرة الأبقار و أغنام..او عشة دواجن
فهناك المورلووك.. الشاحبين يعيشون تحت الارض..يعملون بلا كلل ليعيش هؤلاء المدللين..و يقتنصون منهم ليلا..لياكلوهم كالاغنام
و في إشارة واضحة بلا ترميز..يشير ويلز لتفوق جنس العمال في اواخر القرن 19

آله الزمن هي ذروة عبقرية هربرت ويلز..وضع فيها كل آراءه الإصلاحية و الفلسفية في إطار من الخيال الفائق
و لا ننسى أنه قد أشار للبعد الرابع قبل نظرية النسبية لاينشتاين بعشر سنوات

اعتبرها انا روايتيين: الأولى عن العالم رحالة الزمن الذي يخترع الآلة لانه يريد إعادة الزمن و يشرح لهم ان هناك بعد رابع لكل شيء..و يحاول إقناع مجتمعه بها و يخبرهم برحيله لمدة اسبوع..و يطول انتظارهم له لسنوات

و الثانية عن العالم المستقبلي لعام 80الف الذي انتقل إليه بالفعل
رغم أسلوب ويلز التقريري
الا انها من الكلاسيكيات الفارقة..
تؤكد ان الشقاء والخطر و المعاناة..قد تبدو لنا شرا
و لكنها تحافظ على ذكاء البشر و استمرارهم ..حقا
رؤية اجتماعية تصدمك..و لكن لا يبطلها الزمن
فالفوارق ابدا لن تزول

n  “Any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and—Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives.”n

Ah! The original wibbly wobbly timey wimey novel (well, Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court predates The Time Machine, and perhaps some other books as well, but never mind, you can put me right in the comments section if you want). Certainly it is the first one that I ever read as a wee lad. Last week I was looking for a short free audiobook for a bus journey and for some read on I thought of H.G. Wells and picked The Time Machine as it is my favorite.

The only problem I have with reading this book is that it is already “spoiled” long before I read the first paragraph. I remember all the major plot points very well, and what sci-fi fans have never heard of Elois and Morlocks? What I have no memory of is Wells’ prose style and his narrative talents. As the above quoted passage shows he was an eloquent writer with a rare ability to make scientific expositions sound elegant.

Wells was also an amazing story teller, the story may seem like old hat now but if you imagine that you have never heard of this story and never read anything like it before it is quite an astounding and riveting story. Consider the world building of his Dystopian far future with the two sub species of the human race. It is a beautiful piece of social satire and a thought provoking metaphor for social classes which are still prevalent today hundreds of years after the publication of this novel. There is not much in the way of characterization but that is perfectly fine for a book this short, besides the Elois are all hippy-ish airheads and the Morlocks are not interested in conversations. The protagonist does not even have a name.

The last couple of chapters may well be the most atmospheric. Wells’ depiction of an even further future beyond the Elois and Morlocks era is a little surreal and quite eerie. Those crab things seem like something out of H.P. Lovecraft. The conclusion of the novel is also nice and mysterious, mystical even. If you think H.G. Wells is old hat but never actually read any of his books I urge you to give him a try. Certainly I intend to reread The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man etc. before too long. Yes, they are all old hats but they are great hats! Classic headwears never go out of fashion.

Finally I would like to bookend this review with another favorite passage:

n  “You know of course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness nil, has no real existence. Neither has a mathematical plane. These things are mere abstractions. Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a real existence. So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous cube exist?
Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?n

I have no idea but it sounds great!

Note: I read the free Librivox audiobook version, read by Mark Nelson, the reading is excellent.

The Time Traveller acted respectfully in the future and didn't bring anything back with him to show off to his admirers. He travelled in the correct manner, a lesson for us non-time travellers today.

I enjoyed The Time Machine tremendously. HG Wells had a vivid imagination and his writing is not dated to any great degree even though the book was written in 1895.

بالتأكيد الفكرة غير مسبوقة ورائعة بالنسبة لرواية صدرت عام ١٨٩٥
لماذا هذا التقيم إذن ..
فكرة أن اقرأ رواية خيال علمي من المفترض أن تحمل متعة وإثارة من أول صفحة حتى أخر صفحة
ثم أجدها مملة لهذه الدرجة بالتأكيد كان شيء محبط جداً
أسلوب السرد جاء تقريري وممل وباهت جدا يكاد يخلو من أي متعة
وكأن الكاتب أعتمد فقط على مُخيلة وعقل القاريء لتخيل الأحداث

ورغم ما يبدو في فكرة الرواية وأحداثها المطروحة أن ويلز أنتصر لطبقة العمال المتمثّلة في المورولوك على الطبقة المرفهة الغنية والمتمثلة في الأيلو
حيث الأول يكدح ويعمل ليعيش الثاني مُنعم
إلا أني لمست نبرة إستعلائية ونظرة متدنية لجنس المورولوك
فلم يجد ويلز شكل وتصنيف غير الحيوانات لتكون عليه تلك الطبقة في المستقبل !
واحتفظ بالشكل الأقرب للإنسان لطبقة الأيلو

ربما مشاهدة تلك الرواية بمشاهد وأحداث مجسدة صوت وصورة تكون أمتع من قرأتها التي لم أستمتع بها إطلاقا ..

3.5
La máquina del tiempo fue una novela escrita por H.G Wells, uno de los padres de la ciencia ficción.

Esta obra marcó un antes y un después en nuestra cultura. Todas las películas, series, novelas que utilizan los viajes en el tiempo, todos tienen su origen en este relato de dieciséis capítulos y un epilogo.

Siendo sincera, yo hasta hace bien poco no sabía que el concepto de la máquina del tiempo era una novela y más de este señor. Si ya pensaba que vivía en mi mundo aparte, esto lo confirma.

Tenía una serie de expectativas en cuanto a la novela y me encontré con otras totalmente diferentes. Me pareció una historia un poco pesada al principio, no entendía nada cuando hablaban de física, pero al final estuvo interesante. No me arrepiento de haberla leído.

The Wellsian classic - a man recounts his adventures in his Time Machine. in which he travelled many years into different points in the future to a cynical audience. The reason I feel that Well's sci-fi ages so poorly is because he tied it into a Victorian perspective, although in his defence, he still showed immense foresight compared to his peers, but with the technological developments made since, now is very dated. 4 out of 12.

2009 read

my first novel by h. g. wells and it was decent! this was written in 1895 and so it was interesting to compare it to the sci-fi novels of today. and boy, did wells have an imagination! the futuristic society is a little more farfetched than what most modern novels would probably allow, but i think thats what made it entertaining for me.

n  3 starsn

Finally got around to read this classic sci-fiction. In ways more than one this book was a pioneer in introducing this genre and more specifically the time and space travel themes. There is a very strong underlying theme of exploitation, decadence due to excess and the limit to progress. Interesting read.

[4 Stars] This was a really intriguing quick read. If you're looking for a bit of a curious adventure/survival story about a man who goes forward in time, you might want to pick this up. I liked the protagonist's musings about the future, society, social classes, etc. I think they were what really made this worth the read. Apart from that it is a fairly simple story. I can't say I grew particularly attached to the protagonist though and the beginning of the story was a bit dull, but once things got going I sped through it. Definitely an enjoyable one! Yay for #TBRTakedown :D

This is my first reread of The Time Machine since my mid teens, over four decades ago. Back then, I was just beginning to explore science fiction, and responded to it simply as a pretty cool SciFi tale. Rereading it now, I’m able to appreciate it on so many more levels. Wells was doing a lot with this short book, and he did it elegantly.

Not only is The Time Machine among the earliest examples of science fiction literature, but it is the granddaddy of all modern time travel tales. Wells made the mold, right down to the devise of the use of a machine to travel in time, which has become ubiquitous. This by itself makes the work significant.

Yet The Time Machine is much more. It is a powerful political parable of the consequences of the stark economic inequities between the capital class and the working class. The Eloi and the Morlocks of Wells’s far future represent the grim endgame of the propertied class’s callous disregard for the well-being of the working class that Wells observed in Victorian Britain. His socialist conscience was on full display in this short novel, so much so that it can almost be considered a work of political philosophy as much as an Ur-SciFi novel.

Wells constructed his tale with such skill that, despite its heavy moral, it never comes across preachy or didactic. Its framing story puts us at a bourgeois, Victorian dinner party, where several men, identified only by their occupations, are discussing new scientific theory. It is here that the time traveler introduces first his theory, and then his model of a time machine. The following week, at another dinner party, the time traveler enters gaunt and disheveled, claiming to have just returned from travel in time. He regales the incredulous table with the fantastic tale of his journey, little caring that his companions obviously do not believe him. Every detail of this framing story, and story told within it works elegantly, down to the detail of leaving all the men, including the time traveler, anonymous, thus focusing all on the story being told. It is not by accident that this early science fiction tale from the Victorian Age has become a classic, and is still read on its own merit today.

n  “Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life.”n

I came to enjoy this more than I first thought I would. If, like me, you're turned off by long paragraphs dealing with the mathematics of time travel and dimensions, then grit your teeth and push through the first chapter of The Time Machine. When I was reading the opening pages and stopping to google scientific terms in nearly every sentence, I couldn't imagine I'd find a way to finish the book.

However, the story moves on from this and becomes quite fascinating. The "time traveller" of this piece is a Victorian scientist who develops a machine to take him through time (and has had a huge influence on sci-fi fiction and movies ever since). He finds himself propelled hundreds of thousands of years into the future, where strange descendants of man roam an unfamiliar world.

He observes the world around him, constantly theorizing on how our current world could have reached this point, and he is many times proven wrong in his theories.

I especially liked the end parts of the book, even though it made me feel quite small and insignificant in the great expanse of time.

The Time Machine is a true classic. Originally published in 1895, H. G. Wells’ short novel of time travel is one of the most beloved works in all of science fiction. Back when I was a twelve-year-old, I vividly recall watching the 1960 film with Mom and Dad at the local movie house. Traveling through time with the turn of the century scientist as he encounters first the Eloi and then the Morlocks proved to be among my most powerful childhood experiences.

As I’m sure was the case with thousands of viewers, after reading the short novel, I discovered the book was actually better than the movie. I just did do a reread and my judgement is confirmed – the book is truly outstanding, worth a read or reread by both those new to science fiction as well as avid fans of the genre. SF Masterworks wisely published the novel as a stand-alone and also combined with the author’s The War of the Worlds.

The tale is told as a frame story, that is, the narrator is one of five guests in the home of a British gentleman referred to as the Time Traveller. One evening the Time Traveller shares his ideas about time and space and then displays a model of a device the size of a small clock he claims can move through time. After the Time Traveller places the finely crafted model on his desk next to his lamp and flips a switch, all the guests are astonished when the little time machine vanishes.

At their next meeting, the guests are taken aback when the Time Traveller enters the room pale, scrapped and his clothes dusty and dirty. He then proceeds to recount his extraordinary experience in the last eight days, an experience mostly focusing on his encounters in the far distant future, in the year 802,701 A.D.

Firstly, next to a large white sphinx, he is surrounded by a band of small, frail, beautiful, graceful people all with curly hair and wearing tunics and sandals. He soon learns they live communally in one buildings and are strict vegetarians eating only a curious futuristic fruit.

Such a future race prompts the Time Traveller (and indirectly the author) to pose a number of philosophic questions: Is this close resemblance of men and women a consequence of there being no need for physical force or to protect themselves from beasts or enemies? Why the sameness in all these people he comes to know as the Eloi (children simply miniatures of adults)? Is individuality a thing of the past? What are the reasons for their lack of curiosity and absence of any written language? What accounts for the apparent dearth of struggle and suffering? Is all what he's seeing the inevitable result of the elimination of class and rank? However, as he acknowledges, his general assumptions about the circumstances of their lives proves to be inaccurate.

But then it happens: he discovers his Time Machine is gone. Who moved it? Where is it now? This is but the first in a series of additional shocks: the Time Traveller recognizes, although they spend their days eating and chatting together, dancing and playing and having casual sex, the Eloi lack any deep feelings for one another. This stark fact is brought home when he watches a helpless woman carried down the river and not one of the Eloi comes to her rescue. Undaunted, the Time Traveller pulls her out of the water. Her name is Weena, and she and the Time Traveller subsequently form an emotional bond.

The most shocking revelation: there is a second race inhabiting this future world, a larger, more ferocious race with white fur and blazing eyes, a race living with their machines under the earth: the Morlocks. Thus the plot quickly thickens. The more the Time Traveller grasps the dynamics of this future world, the more sinister and disturbing. Is all this, he muses, the inevitable outcome of the division of class, the idle aristocrats on one side and the laboring commoners on the other?

His philosophic assumptions about a future society have been shattered. After all, he didn’t bring any provisions with him on his time travel since he assumed future peoples would maintain and expand science and technology thereby furnishing him with any needs he might have for things like medicine or clothing. And to think, he also took it for granted there would be one and only one future race of humans. Who would have guessed the human race would split in two?

With the appearance of the Morlocks, Wells’ tale kicks into one of high adventure. Along the way, the Time Traveller battles the Morlocks with an iron club and that most decisive part of human development: fire. Weena places two white flowers in his trouser pocket, flowers he eventually shows his five guests upon his return to Victorian England, flowers that serve as material evidence his time travel is fact not fiction.

Also worth noting: the Time Traveller reports even more distant future times. One particular account of a race of kangaroo-like brutes that have evolved from future humans was deemed too disturbing and cut by the author’s editors. Yet even without this specific inclusion, what the Time Traveler sees is truly remarkable.

A classic work of science fiction not to be missed.


British author H. G. Wells, 1866 - 1946

“So, as I see it, the Upperworld man had drifted towards his feeble prettiness, and the Underworld to mere mechanical industry. But that perfect state had lacked one thing even for mechanical perfection—absolute permanency. Apparently as time went on, the feeding of an Underworld, however it was effected, had become disjointed. Mother Necessity, who had been staved off for a few thousand years, came back again, and she began below. The Underworld being in contact with machinery, which, however perfect, still needs some little thought outside habit, had probably retained perforce rather more initiative, if less of every other human character, than the Upper. And when other meat failed them, they turned to what old habit had hitherto forbidden." - H. G. Wells, The Time Machine