Wells, however, writes of the distant future, the very distant future, in the year ‘Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One A.D.’ to be exact. Wells’ future is a very fantastical account of the future, and quite frankly, it needs to be. His story deals with a very, very distant future, and nothing that far away can be scientifically predicted, so he needs to extensively use his imagination. He does this quite well, making up two whole species with everything from language, appearance and habits, as well as a whole new future world filled with nature’s beauty. Wells tells his tale as if it were an account of the future being told in his present, and we never really feel that this story is completely true; we are never told that it is, or that it isn’t. In his future, mankind has evolved, or rather ‘de-evolved’ into two separate species, the ‘Eloi’, a race living in a new Eden, with no feelings, and very simple minds, and the ‘Morlocks’ a sinister race, preying on the innocent Eloi for food. This depiction of the future is very sinister indeed, and I believe strongly that ‘de-evolution’ will not happen. Wells’ story is very depressing, mainly as a result of the bleak future that he describes for mankind. He shows a ‘struggle’ between light and dark, the terrible state of the ‘Morlocks’ underground, and their ‘inability to survive the daylight’. It also makes me want to believe that this will never happen, even more strongly. The de-evolution of man, I believe, will never happen. Even so, this is a very interesting story to read, and although it is quite short, and completely fictitious, it is a good read for an afternoon at home.
The characters in each story are very developed, and especially so in Clarke’s case. Clarke’s characters all have previous histories, with families, and even Floyd’s “dolphins”, a new pet in the future. Floyd himself has through reading this book, had two wives, a son, his first wife died, and his second divorces him towards the end of the story. This shows the life of a very real person in this time, not a ‘fairy tale’ perfect ending, he is separated from his wife. Reality is never as good as fantasy, but this fantasy is almost as good a depiction of reality as reality itself. In 2010, I believe that all the characters play very major roles in how the story plays out, as there are sometimes chapters straying from the main story, concentrating on just one character who is often not involved in any important action. Having said this, I think that the most important character in the book is ‘Heywood Floyd’. We start off the story with him, and we continue along the plot with him as our focus. Although the parts with the spirit of ‘David Bowman’ do not relate directly to the story until the end and have no interaction with the crew of the ‘Leanov’, they are still interesting to read, for example when he was coming to Earth it says ‘They knew he was coming’, when all the previous discussion had been near Jupiter. All the other parts have some involvement of Floyd, illustrating him as a smart, thoughtful and logical man. He describes the possibility of a ‘Von Neumann’ machine, and he is the one that calculates the ‘trajectory home’. He seems to feel for the doctor when he loses his ‘brainchild invention’. Almost every major section of the book starts with him, and a letter to home. This gives the reader more of tie in to reality, making them feel that Floyd is a real character, not completely fictitious.
In ‘The Time Machine’ however, all but one of the characters are of little real importance. The exception is ‘The Time Traveller’, as Wells’ refers to him. He does not give names to many of his characters in this book; they are labelled by their jobs, or description, rather than their names. This gives the effect that characters aren’t really important, as their names are also of no import. ‘The Time Traveller’ brings the tale of the future to the past, and without him, this story could not exist. He is the one who goes into the future, and comes back to the past to tell the tale. All of the events in the future including him would not have happened, and the ‘Eloi’ and ‘Morlocks, would have continued their routine as usual, with no interference from him. He comes up with many different theories and conclusions of the future at different times in the book. He describes the future as simply ‘communism’, and then he describes the ‘Eloi’ and ‘Morlocks’ as the ‘Have’ and ‘Have-nots’. He then continues to realise the truth, that the ‘Morlocks’ hunt the ‘Eloi’, and that the ‘Morlocks’ are the ones in control. This interests me particularly as I have a keen interest in politics and governmental and class systems.
H. G. Wells writes in surprisingly simple language for anyone to understand in this book, for instance using phrases like ‘it may seem odd’ although there are ideas that some would find complicated, like trying to grasp the idea of ‘time as the 4th dimension’. I had expected this book to be a challenging read, to find words I did not understand to add to my vocabulary, but instead, I found it an easy read, and surprisingly interesting because of that. I thought that because this was written in the last centaury that the words used would be more flowery, bigger words, more eloquent, because at that time mostly the rich and well learned read books, and they would understand such language, but ‘The Time Machine’, shows no complicated words in any case. The ideas are complex, but the words used to put them across are not. He puts across ideas in a form many people can read, ‘image if you could…’ for instance is how he starts of the discussion about time as the 4th dimension, and the words he uses rarely exceed two syllables.
Clarke on the other hand writes, in some instances, in very technical terms, referring to celestial mechanics, and concepts like a ‘von Newman’ machine. This use of technical terms keeps the story realistic, or else without the terms ‘algebraic calculations’ and ‘engine trajectory’ this would not be science fiction would it, but it can be complicated to understand at times. I had no problem with it though, and found that it added to my general knowledge. Clarke’s writing is in a very contemporary style, using some slang in speech, ‘waxed’ when he describes an emotion, and even some Russian, ‘Zagadka’ when describing an enigma between the Russian crew, to keep the story believable. This was also very interesting to read.
During the time that Wells’ was writing this book, many important discoveries were being made in the field of science and technology, including the electric light, and the internal combustion engine. Darwin’s ‘Origin of species’ in 1859 had a great influence in Wells’ life, and led him to write some short stories about the future, later turned into ‘The Time Machine’. Darwin’s influence is clearly present, as this whole future follows a possible theory of Darwin’s, not the theory of evolution, but “de-evolution”, a theory where not only has man evolved from a lower life form, but that man will also eventually return to a lower life form.
Clarke was moved to write this sequel to his original after a very successful movie was released based on his first story, 2001: a space odyssey. He wrote this book during the Cold War, and he believes that the rivalry continues through the friendship between the USA and the USSR even in the year 2010. Of course, soon after he published this book, the USSR had been disbanded, and there no longer was a Cold War. The competition between the Americans and Russians in this book is typical of what was actually going on in the world around him, when it says ‘It’s a race against time, and also a race against the other side’ that is actually what was really happening at the time, each side was fighting for better technology than the other.
All in all, they were both interesting books, and in the case of 2010: Odyssey two, I continued on to read the rest of the series. I am currently on the last book of the series, 3001: the final odyssey, and I think that Clarke is a genius. His writing has kept me fascinated because of his reality merging with science fiction, and I hope that I will soon move on to another one of his great books.
Although I did not like the fact that Wells’ book concentrates on ‘de-evolution’ of man because I don’t believe in it, ‘The Time Machine’ was definitely an interesting read. Wells’ storytelling technique is absolutely brilliant, and so are his stories. There is always at least one thing in each of his books that is believable, such as the theory explaining ‘Time as the 4th dimension’, but everything else is pure fiction, made from scratch. In this book, the theory on the ‘4th dimension’ being time is very plausible, and I have almost come to believe that theory. Another example of his realistic theories is in his story, ‘The War of the Worlds’, when the Martians are defeated by bacteria. But to the point, this was really an interesting book to read, and everyone should read this classic.
Hasan Haider, 11C Page of
