The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

The Time Machine

 H. G. Wells   

Published 1895

English Sci Fi

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The Tine Machine was not very major "Reading England" material, but I added it since the setting is around London and the Thames at the end of the nineteenth century, as well as hundreds of thousands and millions of years later, into the future.  England in the late 1890s was a time of great scientific and technological advances and progress, as well as a time of conflict between laborers and the wealthy upper class.  

The Time Traveler was a scientist who built a time travel machine in his laboratory with the intent to explore the future, using the fourth dimension, which is space (not the astronomical kind either).  He expected to find a future utopia where man had ultimately solved all of his worldly conflicts with labor, poverty, and the environment; however, that was not to be the case.

SPOILERS COMING . . .

Hundreds of thousands of years into the future, he found a world of beauty, like a Garden of Eden, where the temperature was warmer, and the inhabitants had their pick of the land (vegetation) for food. Incidentally, the Time Traveler thought this was great news, until he met the people of this strange world. They were not very intelligent or knowledgeable, as they could not communicate with the Time Traveler about their world.  They were weak, lazy and leisurely, with no curiosity or interest in life, and there were no families.  These people, called the Eloi, were juvenile-like.  

He also learned that they lived in continuous apprehension of night and darkness, and of the underworld beneath them.  That was where the Morlock lived.  The Time Traveler discovered that it was the Morlock who took care of the Eloi, but they also ate the Eloi.  The Morlock attacked in darkness because their eyes could no longer adapt to the sun or light.  You see, the Morlocks were descendants of the modern world's factory workers who had to work in dank, dark conditions and dangerous situations.  Overtime, power shifted, and the descendants of the Eloi, the wealthy upper class people, became lazy and lost control.  Now it was the underground workers who controlled the upper class society of non-laboring citizens.  

For the short time that the Time Traveler stayed in this strange world, the Morlock stole his time machine, and he had a few run-ins with them in his attempt to learn about them. Eventually, he did get his contraption back, and instead of going home to 1895, he went on to see if there was any hope for human beings in the distant future.  Unfortunately, he found a dying earth with strange unusual creatures. It was totally disappointing.  Therefore, he returned home where he met with his colleagues and friends to narrate his strange tale to them.  

And just like a drug, he couldn't stop himself; by the end of the story he was back in the saddle of the time machine again, in search still of a better world for humankind.

FROM BOOK TO FILM 

It is difficult not to confuse the story in the book to the story of the 1960 film version because they are different, and the film fills in some of the missing pieces from the book.  The film focused more on war. When Wells wrote The Time Machine, WWI and II had not occurred, yet.  The film addressed life during and after war, and how it changed man.  Man was drawn into underground shelters at the sound of the sirens, a practice that continued long into the future.  That is how the Morlock captured their prey; people had become conditioned to go underground and seek shelter from danger, at the sound of the siren.

Also, according to the film, man was detached from human relationships and emotion.  At one point, an Eloi was drowning, and no one was compelled to save her.  It is totally believable.

This was a great book to read to my imaginative younger children.  My eight-year old transformed a recliner in our living room into a time machine, and since we read them the book, they have not stopped discussing time travel.  While the vocabulary level is extremely scientific, and not elementary, they were still able to follow the adventure of the idea of time travel.  Time travel is such an adventurous concept.