هربرت جورج ويلز قدم بحث عن وجود بعد رابع وهو بعد الزمان منفصل عن الأبعاد الزمانية التانية واترفض بحثه لأنهم اعتبروه مبهم
وبعدها بأكتر من عشر سنين قدم أينشتين نفس الفكرة وأصبح أعظم شخصية في تاريخ العلم بعد نيوتن-طبعا بغض النظر عن الإثبات ال��ياضي المحكم اللي أزال الإبهام عكس البحث الأول, والتعنت اللي قابل أينشتاين في البداية-


لحد هنا القصة دي تعتبر بتتكرر كتير
واحد بيقدم حاجة وتترفض منه
وبعدها بفترة واحد تاني يقدم نفس الحاجة تقريبا وبيعتبروها حاجة عظيمة

بس المختلف في القصة دي إن ويلز مقعدش يلطم ويسمع أغاني حزينة و "إن الدنيا ماشية بضهرها وحطت عليا" , او "بس الدنيا مش سايبانا في حالنا"

بعدما لم يجد لها مكاناً في العلم
صنع لها طريقاً أخر في أدب الخيال العلمي

ويلز مضيعش وقت
بعد الرفض على طول
بنى رواية كاملة على البحث المرفوض
رواية "آلة الزم��" واللي بتتحدث عن تطبيقات النسبية بعد ما جعلت الزمن بعد رابع!

الرواية بيقدم فيها نظرته للجنس البشري
توقعات ويلز الاشتراكي أصبحت خطأ حاليا نتيجة نظرته المتشائمة لاستمرار نظام الإقطاع, واللي ع العكس إتلغى -في معظم الدول-

الرواية مسلية إلى حد ما, وفيه فيلم إنتاج 2002 عن الرواية ممكن تتفرجوا عليه بعدها

Published in 1895 "The Time Machine" is a Sci-fi classic that is a beloved a story as "The Wizard of Oz" (at least for me it is). A subtle message of the eventual destruction humans will bring upon themselves and the subtle message of hope.
Well written, interesting and to a certain extent intriguing, this story has all the elements to make it a perennial among readers. In my opinion no Sci-fi collection is complete without this gem in it.

How will the Earth look like 800,000 years in the future? That's a question everyone can only attempt to find an answer to, while H.G. Wells was one of the first writers who tackled the topic of time-travelling and painted a rather convincing picture of the future.

Published in 1895, the book introduces a scientist who uses a Time Machine to be transferred into the age of a slowly dying earth. Humans have been separated by time, genetics, wars and change of their habitats into two different races, the Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks. At only about 100 pages, Wells manages to delve into a lot of different topics, among which can be found the ambiguity of human natures, the mutual effects of humans on our planet and our planet on humans, as well as a profound look into what defines humanity itself.

As a dystopian story, this tale has probably been rather ground-breaking back when it was published, and some might even consider it to be the father of all time-travel romance stories. Unlike more recent publications, however, Wells doesn't lose the point of his story in describing romantic affairs and dramatic love stories, but rather delivers a fast-paced narration coated with a prose not unlike most other writing styles from the Victorian era. Since the author builds up his story from some scientific background (the inclusion of which I highly appreciated because Wells didn't leave things unexplained), it is not easy to get into it, but once the narrative gains speed, you will digest this book in the course of a few hours.

For me, the engaging writing and the adventurous atmosphere contributed a huge part to my enjoyment of the novella. His descriptions of the dying earth were fascinating and very memorable, as was the ending which surprised and depressed me simultaneously. Much has already been said about Wells' book and its contents, so I will conclude my review by saying that readers who are not afraid to read important dystopian classics should give this one a try.

The Time Machine is not primarily a novel about time travel, time travel paradoxes and so forth. It is chiefly a speculation on the far future of humanity and, closer to home, about class conflict and the evolution of the industrial civilisation.

It starts as an almost casual chat by the fireside about the possibility of travelling through the fourth dimension and the invention of the machine — oddly described as an ordinary bicycle that can go through time. The “Time Traveller” (he is never named) then pays a visit to the human race of the year 802,701 and discovers what, at first, looks like a utopia: the descendants of the human race seem to live, in perfect harmony, comfortable lives in a garden full of flowers. But as the night comes, a disturbing reality soon replaces this vision... The end of the story is an unsettling flight to Earth’s most remote and crepuscular future. Finally, the Time Traveller disappears, leaving but a few flowers on his desk.

This novella (some 60 pages) is a seminal work of the science-fiction genre. It remains to this day a landmark that has influenced almost all the utopian or dystopian writers, from Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men, to Huxley’s Brave New World, to David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, to Michel Faber’s Under the Skin, to Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day.

Edit: Watched the 2002 film remake, directed by Simon Wells (one of the author's descendants, apparently). This is a somewhat faithful adaptation of the book, yet a quite average movie overall. Most scenes are imitations of Indiana Jones’s tropes: an awkward academic / action hero, an ancient library, some exotic places, a couple of attractive ladies, a gloomy cavern, a heap of skeletons, a melting face. The Morlock are quite ridiculous — around the same time, Peter Jackson included Orcs into his Fellowship of the Ring that were way more convincing. The machine itself, designed like a lighthouse lamp, and the time-lapse sequences are the only unexpected and exciting elements of this film.

Where has this book been all my life? Read to my 10-year-old son on vacation and we were both blown away with Wells' imagination and commentary on the evolution of man, especially the idea that the easier our lives become (via technology and advancement) the more effete we become as a species. My Wayward Pines trilogy certainly owes a debt to this mind-bending work. Certainly one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written.

I read this story in 1962, after Miss Stearns (of blessed memory) read some Wells to us kids in seventh grade. Wow.

I had suddenly had picked up the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Bug.

BIG time!

That was when my disease - reading - got terminal, with this one book which Mom brought to me at age eleven (invalidated for a week with a head cold) from our Police Village public library which she ran.

Can you imagine, my MOM (bless her, too, in the hereafter, Lord) purposefully gave me a terminal disease?

***

No joke - I'm now, at 74, slowly Dying from it!

Used to be music I constantly used to crave as the drug of choice to take upstairs for naptime - now it's my Kindle. I just can't stop reading!

But it's gotten even worse.

Because When you're reading time stops. That means I'm now in Wells' story as the main character. Time stops and light turns grey when you're hurtling thru time, Wells tells us.

That's where my soulmate of 47 years and I are now.

Grey power rules! Wells was right - time flies when you're having fun.

And reading is still the most fun I've had in years.

We're even morphing in tune with our years, as Wells says - we're turning into Elois, gosh darn it. We snack on healthy food, and less of it.

A banquet is way too much! And we avoid fleshly things, like the Good Book says. And the bad folk - Morlocks all - are meanwhile morphing into subterranean creepy crawlies.

Holy moley! Did I just say The Time Machine is a CHRISTIAN book, too?

***

Yes.

I did.

I was torn between 3 and 4 stars on this one and finally went with 4 based on the time it was written. It doesn't read like a more recent SF novel, but it's another thought provoking read. The storage devices that survived times passing, the question of what went with him on his last trip and what kind of society would now result stays with us. Not a bad read.

This has been made into more than one movie (the earliest probably being the closest to the actual book). It like many of Wells' works has inspired thought and conjecture. Wells was an interesting man who saw many things clearly (though personally I disagree with many of his ideas) and some not so clearly. Picturing advancements that weren't well defined in science until long after his own time. Wells wondered constantly about the dichotomy between humanity's ability to leap ahead in scientific development while still trying to wipe itself out.

Wells seems to me to have been a strange combination of inspired thought and closed mindedness. He grasped concepts that were so advanced that some still haven't come to pass, yet also failed to recognize things that were all around him.

Anyway, interesting book, good read.

One of the most difficult courses I took in college was a class called Sociological Theory. The professor was either brilliant or a total nut, I’m still not sure, and one of the questions for our final exam was actually:

Why? (Use diagrams to support your response).

Ugh, ugh, ugh!!! I walked out of that class with a B and I kid you not, I have never worked so hard for a B in my life! I pity the one guy in my class who walked away with an A and don’t even want to think about what his social life was like during that semester because I know mine was down the tubes.

At one point, the kooky prof mentioned The Time Machine as some interesting (but not required) reading to pick up on the side. But since he already had us reading upwards of 1,000 pages a week and we were required to hand in a 7-10 page paper every Monday (just for the one class!!!!), I was like, “screw you! H.G. Wells can kiss my ass!”

And that’s the funny thing about regret. Because now I’m wishing I’d have made time in my busy schedule to read it. Maybe I should have blown off another class for a couple hours so I could have read The Time Machine. And then I could have thought about it in a state of mind that was open and receptive to what was being said and layering it with some weird, academic extrapolations and connections (the kind professors slurp up) and it would become something ultra-meaningful and profound. Or something.

But no, I read it now. At age 29. Because I was dragging my feet and didn’t feel like finishing the book I’m supposed to be reading about Al Qaeda. And so the entire time I was reading it, I was like, “hm, interesting. If I was a younger person and still remembered the specific details about theories I studied in my past life as a student, the ideas in this book would have given me a nerd brain orgasm. And hot diggity damn! This book would have made a fantastic paper for my Soc. Theory class! By referencing several schools of sociological thought and combining those with discussions of evolution, social deconstruction and combining all that with the social norms of Victorian peoples—that would have knocked that prof’s socks off!"

So anyway. I liked this book okay. I’m really not a huge science fiction fan and that aspect probably kept me from getting into it as much as I could have given its potential for creating nerd brain o’s. Plus, it was only 90 pages long. It’s hard to really get into something that’s that short. Parts of the story felt like they weren’t fleshed out enough and Wells seemed to have skimmed over several scenes that shouldn’t have been skimped on. But then I found out that his original intent for this story was to turn it into a full-fledged novel but that just never happened due to some financial burdens and it sort of made sense.

The basic plot revolves around a Victorian gentleman and his theories about time travel. To prove them, he builds a machine and travels 800,000 years into the future where he befriends a group of people, the Eloi, who are descended from modern human beings. They are much shorter, childlike people who only eat fruit and spend most of their day playing games. They have no concept of work, they have no critical thinking skills and are incapable of logical reaction to problems. They are also terrified of the dark.

After spending a few days with them, the Time Traveler discovers another distinct species, also descended from modern man but of a much more sinister nature. This second group lives underground, only comes out at night, is a bit more cunning than the gentle people who live aboveground and this group is also extremely predatory in that they cannibalize the Eloi. These are the Morlocks.

The Time Traveler has several adventures during his time spent amongst the Eloi and the Morlocks and towards the end of the story, Wells makes some fairly blatant comparisons between the Eloi and the ultra-rich of our own society. If they spend their entire days being attended to by others, they will lose the ability to care for themselves and if they’re not careful, over the course of time and evolution of the species, they could turn into the Eloi, a group of wimpy wimpsters upon whom a life of privilege has backfired.

El futuro es incierto. Esta obviedad ha existido desde tiempos inmemoriales y se ha convertido en objeto de estudio e hipótesis para las generaciones que han tratado de explicar el avance de la humanidad. A finales del siglo XIX, muchos escritores empezaron a novelizar su visión del futuro con historias que a día de hoy aún resultan fascinantes y, en muchos casos, premonitorias. En este periodo se considera históricamente a Jules Verne y a H.G. Wells como precursores de la ciencia ficción europea. Mientras que el primero ofrecía un análisis más técnico y científico, el segundo estaba enfocado en las consecuencias sociales del progreso de la humanidad.

En La máquina del tiempo, un científico explica a un grupo de amigos su intención de viajar en el tiempo gracias a una máquina que está construyendo y que se encuentra en su fase final de puesta en marcha. Consigue finalizar todos los preparativos y viajar hasta el año 802.701, en el que se encontrará con dos especies distintas: los Eloi y los Morlocks.

Wells mueve los hilos en una batalla entre el pesimismo y la esperanza, enviando un mensaje de advertencia que sigue siendo tan prioritario como hace más de cien años. Una sociedad dormida, decadente y despreocupada de su entorno se puede convertir en una sociedad abocada al fracaso. El autor era muy consciente de la importancia que tenía el esfuerzo y la superación de obstáculos a nivel individual para conseguir una sociedad inteligente, preparada y autosuficiente. Cualquier acto que suponga la supresión de responsabilidades para un determinado sector o clase social (en contraposición de una mayor presión y explotación de otros grupos) estará condenado a un futuro oscuro.

Con muy pocas páginas, La máquina del tiempo se convierte así en un gran tratado social sobre las diferencias de clases que utiliza la ciencia ficción de forma muy inteligente para poder demostrar comportamientos y actitudes en el ser humano que no encajarían en ambientes más costumbristas o realistas. Se podría considerar que fue uno de los puntos de partida con los que poder hablar de la sociedad actual a partir de situaciones y puntos de vista completamente innovadores.

Actualmente se pueden encontrar novelas del género mucho más elaboradas, con una base científica mejor desarrollada e incluso con una crítica social más mordaz. Aun así, este primer trabajo de Wells mantiene un buen ritmo durante toda la novela, no hace uso de grandes tecnicismos que puedan ralentizar el desarrollo de la historia y, por encima de todo, ofrece una visión de la evolución del ser humano que parece que no ha cambiado tras tantos años y, lamentablemente, parece que no cambiará en los próximos.

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

A brilliant inventor creates the world’s first time machine. After explaining its inner-workings to guests of his weekly dinner parties, he arranges for a follow up meeting about a week later. When the group convenes, they find the scientist exhausted and weathered. After cleaning up and consuming a well deserved meal, he sits down to tell of his journey over 800,000 years into the future.

Damn, this book is old. In fact, I’m certain it is the oldest novel I've yet to read clocking in at one hundred and twenty one years since initial publication. Wells seemingly went to great lengths to explain to the reader how a theoretical time machine would operate and I often wondered if Wells had built one himself based on how detailed his explanations and theories were. It would certainly explain the theory that the author himself is the main character.

That isn't to say it’s too philosophical and technical, there is quite a bit of action and danger. The events in the future carried with it a constant sense of urgency. Whether the traveler is trying to understand his surroundings, avoid capture or trying to find his missing time machine, the action moved at a brisk pace. In fact, a memorable moment had the traveler racing forward in time, worrying that a pillar or some kind of concrete structure may now be erected in the spot he occupied when he initially began his journey. Would he become a part of the object when he slammed on the brakes or would his machine and body simply explode? The story would be a hell of a lot shorter if he ended up like Han Solo encased in carbonite.

While I enjoyed the world building and the spectacle of time travel, I found myself re-reading passages over and over again as I struggled with Wells’ writing. I’m sure prose like this was probably commonplace back in the late 1800s but it was a major hurdle for me in 2013. However, you probably don’t need my endorsement or recommendation, this book is certainly a classic that inspired generations of sci-fi writers - it’s just not something I think I’ll find myself picking up again.

Cross Posted @ Every Read Thing

The Time Machine is considered to be a classic of science fiction and was one of the first books to explore time travel in fiction. It’s one of those books that every science fiction fan should read at a certain point and it has influenced many other writers of the genre.

This is a short book, with a simple plot. And almost anything else in the book is also simple, from the settings to the characters. As you might have guessed from the title, the main character travels to the future to find something quite different, though not completely shocking. Could Wells have imagined something a little more complex? Yes, he could, but it was difficult back then. We’re talking about a book that was written in the late 19th century, after all. It was interesting to learn about this imagined setting, over 800 thousand years in the future, but I couldn’t find myself being completely immersed in this alternative reality, as sometimes happens with other realities created by different writers.

The future visited by the Time Traveler is somewhat different to what we see around us today. And here is where I wasn’t such a big fan of this book. From the point of view of the Time Traveler, this future society exists as a consequence of struggles between the upper and lower classes of society. I couldn’t find this point engaging and I couldn’t picture a struggle between classes leading to such beings as the Eloi and the Morlocks. Additionally, it seemed to me that Wells was trying to teach moral lessons, as an extension of the existing struggles between lower and upper classes in late 19th century England.

At the end of the day I still enjoyed The Time Machine. I thought that Wells skillfully portrayed the Eloi’s fear, while also managing to make the Morlocks creepy, and I enjoyed reading his descriptions of future settings. It’s just that with all the other advances in modern society and technology, not to mention an expanded genre of science fiction books, this book feels somewhat dated.