The Time Machine

by H.G. Wells

Book Overview

Illus. in black-and-white. When a turn-of-the-century scientist travels into the distant future in his time machine, he expects to find progress & superior people. But instead he discovers a world in decay. Reading level: 2.4.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816728739
• ISBN13: 9780816728732
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Troll Associates
• Length: 47 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Age Range: 8 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 3 to 7

Customer Reviews

A Timeless Classic

It goes without saying that this book is a science fiction classic in every sense of the word and that H.G. Wells was a founding father of the genre. This book proves that science fiction does not necessarily need to be heavily technical but does need to deal with grand themes such as the nature of society; man's hopes, dreams, and fears; and the very humanity of man. Wells does not go to great lengths in describing the time machine nor how it works. He lays the foundation of the story in science and then proceeds with his somewhat moralistic and certainly socially conscious story. This makes his writing much more enjoyable than that of a Jules Verne, who liked to fill up pages with scientific and highly technical nomenclature. One of the more striking aspects of the novel is Wells' treatment of the actual experience of time travel--moving in time is not like opening and walking through a door. There are physical and emotional aspects of the time travel process--in fact, some of the most descriptive passages in the book are those describing what the Time Traveler experiences and sees during his time shifts.Basically, Wells is posing the question of What will man be like in the distant future? His answer is quite unlike any kind of scenario that modern readers, schooled on Star Wars, Star Trek, and the like, would come up with. He gives birth to a simple and tragic society made up of the Eloi and the Morlocks. In contrasting these two groups, he offers a critique of sorts of men in his own time. Clearly, he is worried about the gap between the rich and the poor widening in his own world and is warning his readers of the dangers posed by such a growing rift. It is most interesting to see how the Time Traveler's views of the future change over the course of his stay there. At first, he basically thinks that the Morlocks, stuck underground, have been forced to do all the work of man while the Eloi on the surface play and dance around in perpetual leisure. Later, he realizes that the truth is more complicated than that. The whole book seems to be a warning against scientific omniscience and communal living. The future human society that the Time Traveler finds is supposedly ideal--free of disease, wars, discrimination, intensive labor, poverty, etc. However, the great works of man have been lost--architectural, scientific, philosophical, literary, etc.--and human beings have basically become children, each one dressing, looking, and acting the same. The time traveler opines that the loss of conflict and change that came in the wake of society's elimination of health, political, and social issues served to stagnate mankind. Without conflict, there is no achievement, and mankind atrophies both mentally and physically.This basic message of the novel is more than applicable today. While it is paramount that we continue to research and discover new scientific facts about ourselves and the world, we must not come to view science as a rel

Past and present masterpiece

This is the little number that started it all. For the English-speaking world (some translations of Verne possibly aside), science fiction begins with the four brief, brilliant novels published by H G Wells in the 1890s. The War of the Worlds is a still-unsurpassed alien invasion story; The Invisible Man one of the first world-dominating mad scientist tales; and The Island of Dr Moreau a splendidly misanthropic story of artificial evolution and genetic modification. But The Time Machine came first, launching Wells' career in literature; and, after just over a century, there still isn't anything nearly like it. A Victorian inventor travels to the year 802701, where the class divisions of Wells' day have evolved two distinct human races: the helpless, childlike and luxurious Eloi and the monstrous, mechanically adept and subterranean Morlocks. Predictably, the film version turned them into the usual Good Guys and Bad Guys, though it's still worth seeing, particularly for its conception of the Time Machine itself - a splendid piece of Victorian gadgetry. The book, despite its sociological-satirical premise, is rather more complex in its treatment of the opposed races, and the Time Traveller's voyage ends, not with them, but still further in the future, with images of a dead sun and a dark earth populated only by scuttling, indefinite shadows. As in the other three novels, too, the premise of the story is carefully worked out and clearly explained - a discipline largely beyond science fiction today, in which time travel, invading aliens or whatever are simply taken for granted as convenient genre props and automatic thought-nullifiers. After more than a century, The Time Machine is still waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

A review of THE TIME MACHINE

The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells is an unconventional book, which is both intriguing and entertaining. When I read the book I expected a short novel about various insignificant complications of time travel, but was given a tale full of theories and speculations about the evolution of human beings.In The Time Machine the time traveler is recounting his adventure into the unknown that we call the future. Thousands of years in the future he discovers that the human race has evolved into two different kinds, the Morlocks and the Eloi. The Morlocks are nocturnal creatures who live underground and surface during the night, only to prey on the defenseless Eloi. The Eloi, once living comfortably as the ruling race, have degenerated into a simple group of beings that live life effortlessly and without substance. The time traveler describes his interactions with the Morlocks and the Eloi in a thought-provoking manner, creating a highly enjoyable novel. The Time Machine suggests many controversial ideas such as the extreme degeneration of the human race. Not only is it interesting to learn Wells' theories, but his writing caused me to create some of my own thoughts about the possibility of evolution. The open ending to the book also leaves a story for the mind to explore. Facts are not forced upon the reader, but rather he is left to make his own assumptions of the ending of the book. The story is left somewhat unfinished, yet it comes to adequate closure, so that the reader does not feel a lack of conclusion in the novel.I was thoroughly impressed by the concise yet engaging writing by Wells, and believe that this classic would be a necessity in the personal library of any fan of good literature.

A magnificent allegory.

This is Wells' (1866-1946) first novel. It is a social allegory in which the unnamed hero travels to the year 802701 and finds an Earth completely altered. It appears initially to be a form of utopia but the Traveler soon discovers that this is far from true. Society has two classes. The Morlocks, subterreanean workers, are beings evolved from man that have sunk to depravity and who prey on the decadent Eloi. The Eloi are completely useless beings, totally dependent on the Morlocks. Wells is suggesting a world in which the two main classes of Britain of the 1890s have degraded into Morlocks and Eloi. The world of 802701 is the end result of unrestrained and unchecked class struggles and isolation. The upper class has degraded to uselessness and the lower class has become buried by their labor and degenerate into darkness. The term "Morlock" is derived from the Biblical word "Molech," the epithet of a deity to whom children were offered as sacrifices. "Eloi" comes from the Hebrew for "my God" and is associated with an important phrase in the Bible (a rendering of the first verse of Psalm 22 is "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani" ["My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me"], a phrase heard again in Mark 15:34). Thus, both terms are appropriate descriptions of the two classes. Are the Eloi forsaken? Or, will the Traveler return to help them? Although this is probably the first novel containing a time machine, it is not the first time traveling novel. Both Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" (1889) and Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" (1843) precede it. In de Grainville's "The Last Man" (1805), a Frenchman views future events through a mirror; he doesn't actually travel through time. Finally, to the reviewer of Jan. 24, 1999, from New York, there is a reason why the Traveler remains unnamed! Can you see it?