Speech – The Time Machine

I read ‘The Time Machine’ by H.G. His full name is Herbert George Wells. He was an English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian, whose science-fiction stories have been filmed many times. Wells' best-known works are THE TIME MACHINE (1895), THE INVISIBLE MAN (1897), and THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1898). Wells wrote over a hundred books, about fifty of them novels. The novelist made his debut with The Time Machine at the age of 29.

Wells' novels are among the classical works of science fiction, but I think his romantic and enthusiastic conception of technology later turned more doubtful.

Much of the realism of the story was achieved by carefully studied technical details. However, I think the description of the Time Machine itself was extremely vague and let the story down. It was described as a thing of ivory, quartz, nickel and brass that quite illogically carries its rider into an existing past or future. This portrays the book as more of a fantasy than a brilliant science fiction.

This is a preview of the whole essay

In ‘The Time Machine’ the time traveller lands in the year 802,701 and finds two types of people: the Elio and the Morlocks. The book clearly expresses H.G. Wells’ opinion of what the future will be like. It is clear from the novel that his vision is of men so nearly adapted to their environment that the need to struggle, with the deduction of the unfit, had practically ceased. Humanity had become differentiated into two races, both recessive: a race of childlike, simple, delicate creatures living on the surface of a kindly earth called the Elio; the other, the Morlocks, which were the more active but debased race, of bestial habits, who lived underground and preyed cannibalistically on the surface dwellers, who they helped to preserve, as man may preserve game.

The Elio, according to the hypothesis of the time traveller, are the descendants of the leisured classes; the bad Morlocks of the working classes. This prediction states Wells’ own opinion again meaning he thinks the working class are evil.

I found the beginning of the book very interesting when the time traveller was describing time travelling to his friends. He stated that time was the fourth dimension and that we can move along it like we can move up and down and across the first three dimensions - Length, Breadth, and Thickness – and it made me think about the possibilities and why we can not move across time like we can do in the other dimensions. But I thought it was a bit of an anti climax when he had travelled into the future. I found it very boring and more of a romance story, as he fell in love with an Elio, than science fiction story I would have preferred the book if it stayed with its science fiction, time travelling theme than a love, romantic theme.

Here is a passage of the book that I enjoyed and thought expressed the fourth dimension – time – very well:

`Scientific people,' proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause required for the proper assimilation of this, `know very well that Time is only a kind of Space. Here is a popular scientific diagram, a weather record. This line I trace with my finger shows the movement of the barometer. Yesterday it was so high, yesterday night it fell, then this morning it rose again, and so gently upward to here. Surely the mercury did not trace this line in any of the dimensions of Space generally recognised? But certainly it traced such a line, and that line, therefore, we must conclude was along the Time-Dimension.'

I thought the book was very cleverly structured as the main theme was time travelling and to time travel you need a time machine. This allowed the main character to be situated in many different situations e.g. year 802,701 and the original year. This made the book very interesting to reads as I wanted to know how the time traveller was going to cope and react to his new surroundings and situations.

However, I would not recommend this book to any science fiction lovers as it is more like a romance science fiction novel. But I would recommend it to anyone who likes a book that requires a lot of thinking or enjoys fantasies.

Overall this books portrays the young Wells looking at the world and future with his own eyes at the age of 29 or so.