The Time Machine - H G Wells

Probably the second most famous work written by HG Wells, after "The War Of The Worlds", "The Time Machine", originally published in 1895, is a novella which tells the story of an inventor type who devises a contraption to enable him to travel through time. Once he has travelled about 800,000 years into the future, he finds himself in a world seemingly idyllic and perfect, but things are not what they seem.

The way I interpret it, the "Time Traveller" character is articulating some of Wells' own beliefs, concerns and opinions. It was a good idea to have the introductory chapter (s), where the scientific principles supposedly underpinning and enabling time travel are debated and discussed. This gives the story a grounding of sorts, instead of the reader being asked to totally take for granted outlandish or fanciful ideas. I always like an author to take me with him in this manner.

In the initial descriptions of the Earth in 802,701 AD, I detect echoes of children's fairy stories, in the invoking of a kind of idyllic wonderland, albeit one with a few quirks and incongruities. At first glance, the Time Traveller thinks that he has landed in some utopian communistic, egalitarian paradise. He reflects on the implications of this apparent absence of fear and insecurity.

 

As he accepts that his initial diagnosis has been erroneous, the Time Traveller pieces together the grim reality of the dystopian vision before him. Humanity has diverged into two "species", due to social fragmentation and segregation, encouraged supposedly by the industrial and economic systems of earlier times. The insinuation is that this is all the logical and inevitable outcome of the way things were moving even in the late nineteenth century, suitable extrapolated. Of course, social injustice and the iniquities of capitalism were very much a favoured topic of writers and thinkers in Wells' time, and this was an imaginative means of getting his point across.

In this case, the "aristocracy", as represented by the ebullient but frivolous and shallow Eloi, had become decadent, and were being tormented by the brutalized Morlocks, the subterranean dwellers who had hitherto been industrial fodder. Was the author being prescient here, anticipating the conditions which gave rise to certain proletarian uprisings which were to happen in the twentieth century? Rather than grimly declaring "I told you so", Wells makes clear that such a society would not be worth living in, being characterized by fear, terror and unease.

 

The most resonant part of the equation for me was the notion of the death of the intellect, in exchange for comfort and security, with all its manifold, and insidious ramifications. One can argue whether or not the plot details are more plausible than "The War Of The Worlds", but I found "The Time Machine" more stimulating from a philosophical standpoint, as it contains starker warnings about what man's folly can create. The vision and imagination on display are also more lively and fertile to my eyes, and ironically the fruits are more relevant, even though most of the story is set far far into the future. Whether or not one totally concurs with some of the writer's premises, this is a work to jolt the complacency.