Title: The Time Machine
Genre: Sci-Fi Novella
Year: 1895
Pages: 130
Origin: read on the Kindle
Nod Rating: 4 nods out of 5
‘To me the future is still black and blank – is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story.’Time travel has long mystified and excited readers. It has shown its popularity on movie and TV screens in the form of Doctor Who and Star Trek coming back into fashion, but its origins – within Science Fiction form – are found in written text. The Worm is a keen time-travelling fan – despite failing at several attempts to build his very own time machine – and who better to turn to, then to read from Sci-Fi’s very own Godfather: H.G. Wells.
Godfather, captain, Great-Father, or commander: Wells ticks the boxes of all conceivable categories. He is the creator of The Invisible Man, The First Men in the Moon, and The Island of Doctor Moreau. The Worm has had a previous encounter with Wells, having read and reviewed his influential book The War of the Worlds. However, the Worm was left feeling slightly underwhelmed – a feeling not unusual to the Worm, as you will know – and therefore, he stepped into a second book with caution. The Time Machine was the chosen text to reignite enthusiasm.
Such a feeling, then, was similar to the esteemed group that surround the Time Traveller at the beginning of the novella. The concept of time travel is put to them, with few converts to this idea (bar the story’s narrator). As one of them state: ‘You can show black is white by argument, but you will never convince me’. However, various ideas abound and passion is stoked by the possibility of jumping through time, showing the contrast of visions: ‘Just think! One might invest all one’s money, leave it to accumulate interest, and hurry on ahead!’ Or the narrator’s own vision: ‘To discover a society erected on a strictly communistic basis’. The Psychologist (there are no names, but rather the profession of the person) notes the observation of the machine:
‘We cannot see it, nor can we appreciate this machine, any more than we can the spoke of a wheel spinning, or a bullet flying through the air. If it is travelling through time fifty times or a hundred times faster than we are, if it gets through a minute while we get through a second, the impression it creates will of course be only one-fiftieth or one-hundredth of what it would make if it were not travelling in time.’However, most are left non-persuaded by the Time Traveller, the narrator explaining: ‘I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness.’
This changes at a later date when the group return to the Time Traveller’s home for dinner only to discover that the man is bedraggled and starved, recounting a recent adventure that he has had in the future. The narrator notes: ‘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, no hear the intonation of his voice. You cannot know how his expression followed the turns of the story! Most of us hearers were in shadow, for the candles in the smoking-room had not been lighted, and only the face of the Journalist and the legs of the Silent Man from the knees downward were illuminated. At first, we glanced now and again at each other. After a time we ceased to do that, and looked only at the Time Traveller’s face.’
From this moment onwards the Time Traveller recounts his adventure, taking control of the story. Wanting to test the time machine, he travelled forward into the future in the hope of discovering the great inventions and ideas of mankind, before becoming stranded in 802,701 AD. He notes: ‘…the humour of the situation came into my mind: the thought of the years I had spent in study and toil to get into the future age, and now my passion of anxiety to get out of it. I had made myself the most complicated and the most hopeless trap that ever a man devised.’
It is at this point that the story takes on a familiar shape to the modern audience, in its division of races of the child-like innocence of the Eloi who live above ground, and the fearsome night creatures that live below, the Morlocks. Both live in separate spheres, yet at night the Eloi are taken with the Morlocks feasting upon their flesh. But, Well’s story is much more than a simple monster-tale; with his own beliefs on society finding a voice within these creatures. The book can be read as a commentary on the modern day evils of work and industry, in which the rich take the profit without getting their hands dirty, and how the workers are left to suffer the consequences. Such a view is, in Wells’ mind, unsustainable; the edifice will break down before too long:
‘Above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour.’And:
‘Ages ago, thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out of the ease and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming back – changed!’Unlike a recent, poor movie adaption, the Time Traveller does not destroy the system of the future to liberate the Eloi. No, he escapes from this nightmare to return to his own time (before disappearing again, but that last snippet is saved for you, dear reader). Rather, the saviour here is not the character of the Time Traveller, but H.G. Wells himself, firing off warning shots to the heads of industry around the world that they had better help their workers, or be faced to suffer the consequences as they are turned upon: ‘I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide.’ Having written this work at the tail-end of the 1800s, it predicts – as much good Science Fiction does – the impending future. Within decades workers started standing up for themselves, overcoming the “Haves” in bloody riots and rebellions across the world. Wells believes such actions would bring about the suffering of everyone in society, in one large suicidal pact.
But such talk of future bloody revolution takes as away from Wells’ text. If the Worm was slightly critical of The War of the Worlds, he has found a home within Wells’ back catalogue in The Time Machine. It is a short book full of adventure and ideas, of threats and wonder. The Worm can predict one thing of his reading future: he will return to H.G. Wells full of confidence and hope of more escapades and exploits.
Buy it here
And read a similarly nod-worthy review here
