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The Time Machine

h.g. wells

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“I’ve had a most amazing time....”So begins the Time Traveller’s astonishing firsthand account of his journey 800,000 years beyond his own era—and the story that launched H.G. Wells’s successful career and earned him his reputation as the father of science fiction. With a speculative leap that still fires the imagination, Wells sends his brave explorer to face a future burdened with our greatest hopes...and our darkest fears. A pull of the Time Machine’s lever propels him to the age of a slowly dying Earth. There he discovers two bizarre races—the ethereal Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks—who not only symbolize the duality of human nature, but offer a terrifying portrait of the men of tomorrow as well. Published in 1895, this masterpiece of invention captivated readers on the threshold of a new century. Thanks to Wells’s expert storytelling and provocative insight, The Time Machine will continue to enthrall readers for generations to come.

130 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,1895
Places
london england, england, united kingdom, 

This edition

Format
130 pages, Hardcover
Published
January 1, 2002 by House of Stratus Ltd
ISBN
9780755104222
ASIN
0755104226
Language
English
Characters More characters

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About the author

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h.g. wells

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Herbert George Wells was born to a working class family in Kent, England. Young Wells received a spotty education, interrupted by several illnesses and family difficulties, and became a draper's apprentice as a teenager. The headmaster of Midhurst Grammar School, where he had spent a year, arranged for him to return as an "usher," or student teacher. Wells earned a government scholarship in 1884, to study biology under Thomas Henry Huxley at the Normal School of Science. Wells earned his bachelor of science and doctor of science degrees at the University of London. After marrying his cousin, Isabel, Wells began to supplement his teaching salary with short stories and freelance articles, then books, including The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898).

Wells created a mild scandal when he divorced his cousin to marry one of his best students, Amy Catherine Robbins. Although his second marriage was lasting and produced two sons, Wells was an unabashed advocate of free (as opposed to "indiscriminate") love. He continued to openly have extra-marital liaisons, most famously with Margaret Sanger, and a ten-year relationship with the author Rebecca West, who had one of his two out-of-wedlock children. A one-time member of the Fabian Society, Wells sought active change. His 100 books included many novels, as well as nonfiction, such as A Modern Utopia (1905), The Outline of History (1920), A Short History of the World (1922), The Shape of Things to Come (1933), and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1932). One of his booklets was Crux Ansata, An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. Although Wells toyed briefly with the idea of a "divine will" in his book, God the Invisible King (1917), it was a temporary aberration. Wells used his international fame to promote his favorite causes, including the prevention of war, and was received by government officials around the world. He is best-remembered as an early writer of science fiction and futurism.

He was also an outspoken socialist. Wells and Jules Verne are each sometimes referred to as "The Fathers of Science Fiction". D. 1946.

More: http://philosopedia.org/index.php/H._...

http://www.online-literature.com/well...

http://www.hgwellsusa.50megs.com/

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells

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Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 99 votes)
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99 reviews All reviews
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2Blover3000
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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The Time Machine by H.G. Wells and narrated by Carson Beck is an audible book I requested and the review is voluntary. This is one of the few books I have read a few times in my life. I rarely re-read books but this is short and a classic. I have never had it read TO me before and by a professional reader, well, I just had to hear it. It was wonderful! This narration really added some power, emotion, enthusiasm, and tenderness to the reading. I have read this about every 5 years or so but it really is different with an audible book. I just laid back and let my mind go and it was wonderful. It is a short book and I truly enjoyed the time travel vacation my mind took. I think I am very good at adding emotion, and drama to my readings but I do read fast. I think I lose some of this. It was nice to sit back and let it all the emotions pour over me. Wonderful narration! Here is the link to the one I reviewed:
https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Time-M...
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NewCountry13
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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I first read the Time Machine as a teenager, more than 40 years ago now. I remembered it as an exciting adventure story, and I had particularly enjoyed the gradual way the Time Traveller came to understand the world of the Eloi and the Morlocks. I decided to read it again to see whether my opinion had changed.

It’s a mainly downbeat novel. The world of 802,701 A.D. turns out to be not at all what the Time Traveller had expected. Later he travels forward to the far future and almost to the end of life on Earth.

Rather than describe such a well-known story I thought I would highlight a couple of the themes that struck me on this reading. One was Darwinism. At the beginning, the narrator describes the dinner parties thrown by the Time Traveller, and how during the after-dinner conversations “some particular topic would triumph by a kind of natural selection”. Later he ponders on the physical frailty and lack of intelligence of the Eloi, and concludes these arise from a lack of challenge, “For such a life, what we should call the weak are as well-equipped as the strong, indeed, are no longer weak. Better equipped indeed they are, for the strong would be fretted by an energy for which there was no outlet.”

The other theme was the class conflict of Wells’ time. When the Time Traveller first arrives, he climbs a hill for a view of the society of the Eloi, and his first thought is “communism”. It turns out though that class conflict still exists, in a weirdly mutated form. When I first read the book all those years ago, I wholeheartedly shared the Time Traveller’s horror of the Morlocks. I felt the same on my second reading, although thinking rationally, the Morlocks did not choose their fate, and have no other way to live.

If you haven’t read the book, it’s worth doing so. It’s very short and can easily be read in few hours.
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asifshinichi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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n  "You read, I will suppose, attentively enough; but you cannot see the speaker's white, sincere face in the bright circle of the little lamp, nor hear the intonation of his voice. You cannot know how his expression followed the turns of his story!”n

3.6/5

My first classic and science fiction of the year and it did not disappoint! I am a huge fan when the narrator is first person POV and speaks directly to the readers. I am an even bigger fan when we are retold the story from what the narrator can write down from a speaker. Such is the set up of this short story. The time traveller sits down with many people and retells his recent time travel into the year 802,701 A.D.
n  Humanity had been strong, energetic, and intelligent, and had used all its abundant vitality to alter the conditions under which it lived.n


Although this story was a quick read, the plot itself was a bit all over the place. Sometimes nothing would happen, there seemed to be a climax that really didn't reach a resolution before jumping to another shorter plot. Up to the last chapter and the epilogue, I would have given this 3ish stars, HOWEVER, once I read those last couple of pages I quickly bumped my rating. I do love a mysterious ending. Overall, this is the kind of quick read I was looking for and it definitely filled my appetite for a science fiction read (which I haven't had in a while).
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Kuhaikyu
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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Surely an oversight that I hadn't read H.G. Wells' The Time Machine before now. By all accounts, this is the original time travel story. Still, social class and how technical innovations change humanity are more central to the story than whether the narrator was actually able to travel to 802,701 AD. Ever since, time travel stories have been about exploring the possibilities of the present rather than some far-flung future (or past). This novella was sometimes clunky (but it was written in 1895), but I found it a quick and fun read which continues to be thought provoking. And it has a solid ending!
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YMW18
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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What’s in store for the future?



Well, maybe some spoilerish content if you haven’t read this book yet.

If you go by H. G. Wells novella, society (at least in merry future England circa 802,000 AD) will have been split between the Eloi and Morlocks in a bizarre twist on the haves and have nots.

What we predict for the distant future is predicated on what’s happening in the present. Wells future is filtered from the political science theories of his day. Capitalism-Communism, Workers-Idle rich, Industrial Age Woohah, but when it boils down to the story itself, Wells presents a fairly compelling glimpse for what’s down the road in a gazillion years or so.

What gave me goosebumps was when the Time Traveler left Morlockville and ended up in the waning days of Earth, as the planet hurtled into the abyss. I can’t imagine sitting there and getting a glimpse as everything comes to an end. It would be mind-blowing. This is far scarier than ducking a bunch of cannibalistic white monkeys. Just laser-tag those Magoo bitches.



Unless I was a gambling man, my choice, because I’ve always been a history buff, would be to hop on the souped-up time machine/lawn mower and journey into the past and wreak havoc there.

This is the second buddy read of a Wells classic by the Goodreads Legion of Non-Crunchy Pantsless Classics Readers Guild, the first being The Invisible Man awhile ago. It’s easy to see how Wells has had a profound influence on popular culture; his concepts are still being harvested and expanded on to this day – he’s the Stan Lee of the turn of the century minus the self-promotion and “foggy” memory of course.



In the future, they’ll build Meth labs on the Moon.
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MrLegitimacy
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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Some authors can see further into the future than the others… H.G. Wells could see even further than those that could see far…
As a result his gloomily satirical The Time Machine is a work of a prophet.
Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have a huge variety of needs and dangers.

The future is now…
Morlocks produce commodities… Eloi produce pop culture… Morlocks consume pop culture… Eloi consume commodities…
Politicians consume both Morlocks and Eloi…
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SaikaEternal
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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‘It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger and trouble.’

(What doesn’t kill you does indeed make you stronger…preach it, H.G.Wells)

A brilliant marriage of philosophical reflection, scientific detail and high adventure.

Whilst being widely recognised for his uncanny prescience, precocious ideas and major influence, I don’t feel that Wells is given enough credit for his writing ability. The Time Machine is vibrant, fast paced, and saturated with convincing and lively detail. What also sets it apart for me is that it is not nearly as emotionally detached as some of his other works; the Time Traveler experiences and expresses horror, fear, sadness and even tenderness. He is one of Wells’s more sympathetic protagonists.

I can appreciate that this novel could perhaps feel a little dry to some. Whilst the scientific theory is elaborate and astoundingly well articulated, it may prove distracting and distancing from the main action of the narrative. I don’t say this to be condescending in any way, but a little prior scientific understanding may be beneficial to appreciate Wells’s skillful crafting fully, eg. entropy, natural selection etc. But that does not mean that this can’t be enjoyed as a thought provoking adventure. Wells was a committed socialist as well as a scientist and by extrapolating from his own time, established and speculated a link between class division and evolution. The Time Machine is also an exquisite work concerning sociology. He presents a vision of what appears to be Utopia, initially diagnosed as a strain of Communism. However, things quickly escalate and it becomes shockingly apparent that the year 802,701 AD is in fact a grotesque inversion of capitalism, where class divisions have become so distinct, it is expressed biologically.

We owe so much to H.G.Wells. Alien invasions (aliens, period) and time travel are just two of the notions that are now deeply ingrained into our collective consciousness. Just look at Dr Who (all hail David Tennant, obviously) - the TARDIS even steadily vanishes into thin air with a gust of wind, just like Wells’s original Time Machine. And my, do I love Dr Who.
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Sabrael
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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The Time Machine is a quirky candidate for the father of science fiction with its time-travel elements and the year it was published back in 1895, plus the way it rushes into a far distant future.

It's also a bit old fashioned, focusing on a bunch of stuffy, important men dining on choice cuts and smoking expensive cigars while, suddenly, the main character mysteriously zips off into seemingly impossible worlds without scientific explanation.

Imagine what a time machine designed in 1895 would be like, with its mechanical levers, analogue dials and steam whistling out of its coal-fueled (probably) boiler. Basically just an upright seat in an open, oblong frame.

This book is phenomenally forward thinking for its age, including time lags associated with travelling through space - out there for days on end, maybe weeks - but when you come back it's only been a few minutes for everyone else, which means ageing while those at home remain the same, a concept that's been explored in many science fiction stories since.

The book focuses on a future race called the Eloi and how they subsist on the surface of the visited planet, a seemingly useless and weak people who live in lazy and ignorant abandonment, as well as their mirror image, the evil Morlocks who live physically out of sight in the shadows and under the ground, who run the industry that keeps everything running on the surface. The Morlocks regularly go to the surface to terrorize and prey on the unsuspecting Eloi, which creates dystopian horror rather than the superficial utopian bliss.

The Morlocks could be the forefather of Tolkien's orcs and there's a definite good versus evil element to this book, which works well.

Although a classic, this is not a flawless read. The unnamed main character gets an opportunity to explore the sinister depths and reveal the mysterious nature of how the Morlocks live, but instead clambers back to the surface before seeing anything, so we never find out what it's like down there. There is a disappointing lack of plot development because of this.

There is also a weird and almost husband-and-wife relationship between Unnamed and an Eloi called Weena as his little companion, who strokes his hair, sits on his shoulder and dotes on him.

A strange book to say the least, with distinct black and white contradictions and past vs future divergences that strangely combine really well. This fine literature gets more memorable as you reflect and think about it.

Although super far-fetched, H.G. Wells writes in an extremely charming and accessible way that's a total pleasure to read. This is a science fiction masterclass for the ages that's also quite wonderfully odd.
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