The Time Machine: An Invention

By H.G. Wells, Ursula K. Le Guin and W.A. Dwiggins

When the Time Traveller courageously stepped out of his machine for the first time, he found himself in the year 802,700—and everything had changed. In this unfamiliar, utopian age creatures seemed to dwell together in perfect harmony. The Time Traveller thought he could study these marvelous beings—unearth their secret and then return to his own time—until he discovered that his invention, his only avenue of escape, had been stolen.

H. G. Wells’s famous novel of one man’s astonishing journey beyond the conventional limits of the imagination first appeared in 1895. It won him immediate recognition and has been regarded ever since as one of the great masterpieces in the literature of science fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Aug 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307757784

H.G. Wells

H.G. Wells is considered by many to be the father of science fiction. He was the author of numerous classics such as The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The War of the Worlds, and many more. 

Reviews for The Time Machine

[proustitutes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I surprisingly enjoyed this book VERY much! It's tiny, for one thing--I read it in a single car drive to Orlando. Usually I wouldn't be able to afford so much praise to a tiny book. Novella, really. But this book is a glorious exception.

In it, a time traveler talks lucidly and plainly of his experiences traveling into the future. He sees two races of human-like species, descendants from modern day humans. However, they are "lower" than us and less intelligent life-forms.

Wells conjectures on what made them this way over the hundreds of thousands of years, and comes to the conclusion that our technology created a society that made it very easy for humans to survive. Intelligence no longer became a factor in reproduction, as is necessary to ensure intelligent offspring. Therefore you get this end result!

Wells wrote beautifully of social theorizing and what he suspects may happen in both the near and distant future. It's a great book for its time (written in 1895), with people just beginning to wonder about the ultimate effects of technology and increasing industry.

I also enjoyed, by the way, Wells' numerous comments about the continuing heart and sentiment and love of humans, and our capacity for gratitude, which he portrayed so very nicely in the endearing Weena.

[olivermagnus · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This classic science fiction novel opens with the Time Traveler, explaining to his Victorian peers, his plans to travel in time. The next scene is a dinner party a week later with the narrator and a few of the Time Traveler's previous guests. The Time Traveler enters the room in terrible shape. After he has cleaned up he begins to tell them of his trip in time. The Traveler tells them that he went to the year 802701 A.D. The England of the distant future is a beautiful place, almost a Utopia, but civilization is in majestic ruin. He first encounters the Eloi, a race of pretty, vacuous beings descended from humans. All other animals are apparently extinct, and the vegetarian Eloi have every need mysteriously provided for.

The Morlocks are hunched-over, pale ape-like creatures with glowing cat-like eyes that live in elaborate underground cities. They quickly steal the time machine and drag it into their territory. Though the time traveler clearly understands the Eloi’s fear of this other race, he has no choice but to pursue his machine underground. The world of the Morlocks is completely devoid of light and the time traveler’s venture underground is one of the most horrific moments in classic literature.

The Time Machine is a social doom prophecy. This was the book that really propelled Wells’s career as an author writing fantasy-like visions with a scientific approach. Wells created a new path for his career, but also for a genre of writing. Some of Wells’s writing will feel dated to modern readers, but it is worth bearing in mind that he was writing the beginning books of modern Science-Fiction. Later authors, including even Wells himself, would go on to improve on the foundation laid here. So many of the questions addressed by time traveling narratives originate with Wells, and for this reason The Time Machine is essential reading for any science-fiction fan.

[akblanchard_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A Victorian gentleman-scientist known only as the "Time Traveler" builds a machine that can transport him far into the future or back into the past. The machine takes the Time Traveler all the way to 802,701 A.D., where he finds that humanity has split into two separate species: the attractive but intellectually-limited Eloi, who dwell above ground in empty-minded happiness, and the brutish Morlocks, who live underground and fear light. The symbolism isn't very subtle; when the Time Traveler returns to the present day he tells his friends that he believes the dim Eloi are the descendants of the British upper crust, while the uncouth Morlocks' ancestry goes back to the country's working classes. He conjectures that the relative ease of Eloi lives caused the species' moral, physical and intellectual deterioration over the centuries. The Morlocks are still subservient to the Eloi in some respects, but after thousands of years, the underground creatures have found a shocking way to take advantage of the surface-dwellers' fragility.In Wells' pessimistic vision, the forces of natural selection have led not to the improvement of humanity, as is commonly supposed, but to its decline. Despite the novella's age and familiarity (there are several adaptations and movie versions), I was surprised at how engrossing this work still is. I highly recommend it.

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

‘Even this artistic impetus would at last die away—had almost died in the Time I saw. To adorn themselves with flowers, to dance, to sing in the sunlight: so much was left of the artistic spirit, and no more. Even that would fade in the end into a contented inactivity. We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity, and, it seemed to me, that here was that hateful grindstone broken at last! ‘As I stood there in the gathering dark I thought that in this simple explanation I had mastered the problem of the world—mastered the whole secret of these delicious people. Possibly the checks they had devised for the increase of population had succeeded too well, and their numbers had rather diminished than kept stationary. That would account for the abandoned ruins. Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough—as most wrong theories are!Even though the Time Traveller came to realise that he was wrong about the Eloi's seemingly idyllic life, the quotation about being kept keen by the grindstone resonates through the rest of the book, as he is finding them disappointingly dull and incurious well before he finds out about the Morlocks. I wasn't sure to start with if I had read it before, butI now I think that I must have seen a film version, possibly in black and white as I have monochrome memories of the time machine passing through wartime when his house had bomb damage. I quite enjoyed it, but it wasn't as much fun as the Invisible Man. Too much time spent with the dull Eloi made it a bit dull in parts.The time-traveller really was rather ill-prepared for his first trip. He wore a pair of scruffy old falling-to-bits shoes that he normally wore round the house, and would any smoker really forget to take a good supply of cigarettes or tobacco with him? His lack of attention to the crablike things on the far future beach and to the oxygen-depleted atmosphere was equally foolhardy.

[slpwhitehead · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Time Machine H.G. Wells

2.5 stars, round to three


H.G. Wells is the grandfather of time-travel writing, and I've heard so many things about this book that I guess I expected it to be GREAT! However, I have been torn by how I feel about this book, so it's taken me a couple of days to decide what to say about it.


The Time Traveler, which is the only name this character is given, has traveled through time to the future. He encounters first what he thinks is an idealistic world of the Eloi, but soon discovers the more sinister and dangerous Morelock. This story is really the telling of a group who come to dine with the Time Traveler (in his present time) and are then told the story of his time traveling.

Based on the description on the back cover of "shock", "fear", and "adventure", I expected the book to be riveting and fast-paced. I expected the Morelocks to be terrifying as they are described as being on the back of the book. However, I found myself sorely disappointed. The book was not shocking or riveting. The book didn't evoke fear nor was there a real sense of adventure to me. Instead, the tale of the Time Traveler's experiences left me yawning; I was simply bored by it. I guess I wanted something that was more fast-paced in terms of the "adventure" of the book.

Having said that, however, there were some things that I loved about the book.

First, the writing is beautifully done. Wells has a way of phrasing an idea that makes a sentence a beautiful thing. Wells can really turn a phrase.

Second, the text is a well-done social commentary about social structures, about the ideas of class (masters and servants), about rich and poor, and about the impact of technology. Taken as a social commentary, it's a great book with some provocative questions and suggestions about where the future will lead us. Even though the text is set in Victorian times, Wells commentary on social structure is equally applicable today.

Sadly, the book just falls sort for me on the "adventure" aspect. I guess I just wanted the time traveling part of the book to have more "action".

[trilliams · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

You're all Morlocks.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I thought I knew what to expect from this book since there are so many references to it in popular culture. I was expecting an adventure story along the lines of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, using a time machine instead of steam ships. I was wrong. This is a dystopian novel with a pessimistic view of humanity's future. The format didn't work well for me. It's essentially a story within a story. The first person narrator recounts the story told by the Time Traveler after his return, with the Time Traveler's story also presented in first person. I like Sir Derek Jacobi, but his voice wasn't right for this book. It needed a reader with a younger voice. I love time travel stories that visit the past. After this experience with time travel into the future, I may stick with the past from now on.

[rain.e.drew · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My actual rating would be a 3.5, and since I like rounding up rather than down, 4 it is.
Don't get me wrong. I firmly believe H.G. Wells to be one of the founding fathers of science fiction. His ingenuity is unquestionable, and I can easily say that he was a man ahead of his time. It's just that this book didn't wow me. Maybe it was because I didn't read it in one sitting (though you could) or perhaps it was simply because I had misguided expectations.
The Time Machine is good solid writing, very thought provoking, and honestly frightened me at times as if it were a murder mystery. It raises a lot of questions about the future of human evolutions as well as the future of planet Earth, all the while returning it to a nice Victorian setting.
It is a must read for all who hold science fiction near and dear to their hearts. My only serious critical critique is that I feel like he could have done more with the story plot-wise. It is, however, an extraordinary read and shouldn't be found missing in your bookshelf.

[thatotter-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Strange and striking. It seems more like, say, Gulliver's Travels than something that was written in the late 19th century.

[coffeehag · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This story is well told. I enjoyed the nineteenth-century atmosphere of the Time Traveler's gatherings with his friends and Well's description of how the dim light of the smoking room illuminated the people within it. Wells pays attention to detail without spilling over into tedium, and the main story, which tells of the protagonist's travels forward into the future, was gripping, so that I didn't want to put the book down.

[buffalogr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

H.G. Wells' famous story of the time machine, amazed that I've not read it until now. Listening is a transition as I go back to 19th century english, but fun. Scott Brick did a good job reading. Now, I'll search for the movies and compare them to the book, like everyone.

[vombatiformes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this for the first time (somehow!) in a college class I had on literature and themes of evolution in literature, and even though I was familiar with the creatures in the story I wasn't familiar with the actual plot. I was kind of resistant to science fiction as a genre at the time, so I was surprised when I enjoyed it so much. I wound up writing my final paper for the class on this book and themes of social class!The Time Machine is about a scientist who presents his newest invention to his colleagues -- a machine that can actually (as the title suggests) move someone within the "dimension of time", and the scientist demonstrates that by using it for the first time to go far into the future during a time when man has evolved to become two distinct races of human. Things seem idyllic on the surface, but everything is not as it seems as the scientist quickly finds out. This is an exciting story that is both thought provoking and a little terrifying. There is a lot of really great imagery and ideas and it's easy to see why this is considered a classic.

[maggieflo_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I know this is supposed to be the first work of science fiction.It is a short book and quick to finish but I just couldn't get really interested in the characters. The future I this world is not very appealing as it is a life of leisure for the Upper world inhabitants and a life of survival for the Under worlders. He make some interesting comments about society as a whole, I'm glad to get caught up on the classics that have neglected.

[pilgrimjess · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

More punch than pages.This tale is either a long short story or a novella(my copy contained 91 pages of text as well as introduction and notes) but it certainly packs a punch. What is remarkable is that this book was written in 1895 in a post-Darwinian era when survival of the fittest was the buzz word and when Victorian scientific and industrial development was at its height and went on to spark a whole new genre. Rather than mere ghost stories here was a book about scientific advancement with a social message. A kind of cautionary tale.The book is in some respects like a three act play, with a dinner party at the beginning where traveler's theory of time as the fourth dimension is discussed complete with vanishing model, the journey itself and then another dinner party (a week later) where the traveler's experiences in the year 802,701 are discussed. The book is told in the frame of an oral narrative with one unnamed narrator mouthing the words of another named narrator. This ploy suggests that the narrator is more therefore reliable than the original giving the story more credence. In the year 802,701 firstly meets the Eloi, descendants of modern man, who seemingly live an idyllic life of ease and without fear but the traveler soon becomes aware that the Eloi fear the dark and with justification for darkness is the realm of another race of man,the Morlocks. The Morlocks are the workers who have been forced to live in the darkness of underground and who prey on the Eloi. Now in Wells's mind the Eloi come to represent the elite in society who live increasingly a life of leisure whilst the Morlocks represent the masses, the working class. Whilst the elite become increasingly idle they also become less worldly whereas the Morlocks cut of from education, privilege etc finally due to sheer weight of numbers revert to their more baser attributes. Thus in the end the Eloi become rather like sheep to be grazed upon by the Morlocks whenever they see fit. Therefore, the book becomes a social commentary on man's ever more reliance on machine and as such still has a relevance in today's society perhaps even more so in our increasing reliance on robotics and the internet. I found it interesting that the traveler defeats the Morlorks with mere matches like some modern day Prometheus and when he returns to his own time his first desire seems to be for meat suggesting that mans' decline was somehow inevitable, this coupled with his continued journey forward in time when he saw earth's ultimate destruction in an uncaring universe. Like I said a book with a punch.

[meditationesmartini · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It's funny, I remembered the central metaphor here all wrong--the Morlocks as gentle giants on the surface, the Eloi as exquisite vampires who prey on them. I guess I knew it didn't make any sense ("morlocks live underground" being surely part of our general cultural competency), but I didn't stop to think about it much and simply remembered this as one of the books my dad bribed me to read when I was a kid, the future world as magical and dark, and the further future as deeply chilling. It's interesting that it was that final future fantasy that stuck with me the most: the Morlocks and Eloi as a generic, if vivid, SF binary-opp society (and me getting all the details wrong), but the red dead sun, the slow-moving crabs, the slow fading of the last vestiges of the first heat of Creation and that polyp-like creature flopping and dying in the endless snow. Yikes! It makes you think, how long has it been since we had an end-of-the-world scenario that assumed our natural decline? Whether it's nuclear war or aliens or climate change or the matrix, present-day eschatology is all apocalypse, all the time. It's frivolous, histrionic, masturbatory. We are perfectionists who go to pieces at the slightest thing.Contrast our Victorian Time Traveller and the "manly vigour of the race" (absolute Wellsian language here): these are people who finally have a basic scientific framework in place for understanding what life is, and they are eager to extend it even unto speculation about the building blocks of reality and what machines might be able to interfere with them, unto fables of devolution (from the precambrian we came, to the precambrian we shall return) and the interweaving of the biological and social (there are literally a billion ways to read the Es/Ms as mythologized capitalists and proles, and even Wells couldn't decide on just one, with the Time Traveller's shifting sense of where the (degenerate) mastery lies and where the (degenerate) abjection--in the end, mastery is abjection, and ownership of the means of production hasn't done the Morlocks any favours: I know I'd rather be a happy sexy Eloi even if my friends won't save me from drowning and the neighbours downstairs are getting ready to gut and fillet me.It's shocking how it hits you right in your sense of what's real, in distinction, per above, from our currently favoured escapist end games tailormade for a romantic lead to shake his fist at God. Killing the deity and replacing him with evolution doesn't make us masters (in fact, having a skyfather makes us his favoured children); it displaces us once more from the centre, turns us into a mere chemical notion or momentary dissonance in the physical fabric. It is so much more tragic than the self-aggrandizing "end with violence" or "end with transcendence," since it happens so slowly there's no place for heroism at all. That reflects back on the nineteenth-century man of action at the centre too, of course, making of the Time Traveller, with his eugenic sensibilities and positivist social views and quickness to command the good small people and drub the bad, a kind of virile brain-brute, a veritable--to borrow the name of our local newspaper in "Victorian" Victoria, BC, if you can believe this--"Times-Colonist,"which when I was a kid I totally totally took to mean the "Colonist of Time," the paper that sails on through the times, broadsheets trim and newsprint-gray, collecting the events of the day and placing on them its imprimatur. "We were there. We told you how it was." On this day in history, the headlines said, TIME TRAVELLER PLANTS FLAG OF SCIENCE IN THE YEAR OF OUR WORLDVIEW 802,701.It's actually just that the one paper the Times bought the other (the Colonist, still a fucked name). But in that light, how ripe is this book for any number of "Grendel"-style dip-and-flip inversions that expose the colonizer's total failure to get any of it right? Not only the gentle Morlocks as outlined above, but how about the smart Eloi, whose society actually sounds largely amazing, trying to drum up the interest to dim their sensibilities and teach this week's angry weirdo from the past how to speak their language and that they give of themselves to the Morlocks at the end of their lives because sustenance is a sacrament? Or the proto-(post-post-post-)fascist Morlocks that come back and invade Edwardian London and rule there? Some of these already exist, as many later writers have tried to fill out or address the Time Traveller's evident bewilderment. And it's a neat trick--Wells can't see his own biases, so he catapults his protgonist past the coming socialist utopia that the author himself certainly believed in and into a world so different that any attempt to navigate it is bound to end up as frustrated as the linen-suited orientalist trying to get a rickshaw. No wonder he was the blockbuster writer of his time! He's really good at being all things to all people.

[martinbodek · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What took me so long to read this classic? Well worth the wait. I found it ambitious and interesting, eloquent and fascinating, but overwroughtly pessimistic. Was this truly Wells' view of the future? He predicted many other now-commonplace things with accuracy, so this was certainly his view. In other hands, it may have been more optimistic, but perhaps the quality would be lacking in the story itself. My appetite is now whetted for more Wells and more classics.

[tealightful · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

6/24/12: 3/4 of the way through the book: I don't generally start reviews before I've completed a novel but I cannot resist. I am shaming myself for having waiting so long to begin reading [outside of mandatory school reading] H.G. Wells. What an incredible author; his prose is impeccable. The Time Traveler is a mad scientist, in that sort-of manically frenzied yet still loveable and thought-provoking way. I am swooning at this story, thus far.

6/25/12: Completed book and small summary: I stayed up late to finish, I couldn't help myself. This is the story of the Time Traveler, whose name is never disclosed and narrated by an anonymous spectator who is not even given a nickname. Time Traveler finds himself in the year 802,701; among the Eloi [who are described as childlike, simple, unintelligent pretty creatures] who live in the Upperworld and the Murlock [white ape-like creatures, blind in the light with lidless eyes and are cannibalistic]. Upon landing, he loses promptly loses his Time Machine and must go on quite the learning adventure in order to find it. During which time, he meets and begins to love an Eloi, named Weena. After much ingenuity, luck and perseverance, he finds himself able to return home. Where a room full of his colleagues and friends [The Editor, Medicine Man, etc] have been awaiting his entrance to a planned dinner. Upon arrival, he launches into the sordid tale of his narrow escape - which none believe. It's a wonderful book, so impeccably written. I just may have to call you foolish if you do not read his work.

Favorite Quotes:

1) "Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their movements out of the unknown past and into the unknown future."

2) " You know that great pause that comes upon things before the dusk? Even the breeze stops in the trees. To me there is always an expectation about that evening stillness."

3) "My pockets had always puzzled Weena but at the last she had concluded that they were an eccentric kind of vase for floral decorations." (I just thought it was adorable).

4) "There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change."

[ireadthereforeiam · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The main man holds court in his parlour in late 1800s England with a story of his incredible travels through time. His chums are advised to listen carefully and to not interrupt. The story begins with conversation on the possibility of time travel itself, and continues with the event having happened. Time travel, in this case, means going forward a lot of centuries to an improbably futuristic year of 800,000 and something. Humans have evolved into two separate sub-species, one placid pleasant lot living above ground and a light-hating flesh-ripping lot who dwell in subterranean darkness. The time machine itself goes AWOL and our man is understandably in a panic about getting it, and himself, back. A rollicking and gripping story which surprised and delighted me.

[nmele_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Like the other H.G. Wells novels I have reread recently, this one surprised me by being darker and less romantic than I remembered. Much filmed, "The Time Machine" has no love story, in fact. Nor much action. What it has is an expansive, if dark, vision of the future.

[melissarochelle_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Read from November 18 to 22, 2011As a casual reader of science fiction, I figured it was time to read one of the first major (though only a novella) works in the genre. And I have to say, I didn't hate it...but I didn't LOVE it. While the Time Traveller's adventure was interesting and I enjoyed reading ideas that I've seen built into other books I've read, it just didn't grab me. What surprised me most though was how modern it felt. There were passages that startled me with how true they still are...ideas about nature, class, and technology.While I didn't love it, I'm glad I read it. :)

[thach_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Characters: The Time Traveller The NarratorWeena Setting: In a fantasy land in the future. Theme: Little things in present times can change the future. Genre: fantasy, science fiction. Summary: This story is about a time traveller who creates a device that helps him travels into the future. In the land the he travels to, the land is a bit more barbaric and the species of beings has changed. He eventually makes friends with one of the beings and develops a relationship with her. The story continues with him interacting with the species. Audience: Young adults and people who are interested science fiction Curriculum ties: learning about different genres and writing styles. Personal response: Time travelling as always been an interesting concept for me. I remember when I watched “Back to the Future” and how it made me really think about going into the future. This book elaborates going into the future in a more different kind of way. For the book to be written that long ago and for them to write about how the human race changes into a different species really creates an analytical part to the book. The writing of the book is very detailed and concise. While reading it, the reader can really imagine how the future may possibly change to the way it was in the book.

[leslie398 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have seen the movie (with Rod Taylor), so I was familiar with the basic plot... I probably would have given a higher rating if I'd read the book first.

It was interesting to me that most of the characters didn't have names, but were referred to by their occupation (the Doctor, the Journalist, etc.).

[briandarvell_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not much to say other than this is one of the classic early science fiction stories. I read it before watching the modern Hollywood movie and was glad I did (since the movie sucked). It's quite an easy read and is fast-paced. When reading this while keeping the perspective of when this was written I found the story very clever and enjoyable.

[versor-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

H. G. Wells was clearly a master of the genre. "The Time Machine" works through both science and sociology, examining the dangers of aristocracy and Marxism in a thought experiment on the distant future of 802,701 AD.

Wells uses pleasantly complex vocabulary, the allowance of which I envy. I wish I could write the words recondite, trammel, and fecundity in the first paragraph of a novel without alienating the vast majority of our modern, poorly educated audience. Alas, it cannot be so, lest I am already an established author with a profound influence that people will not simply ignore. Oh, well.

This classic story lacks the stylized salvation present in both film adaptations of which I am aware. The Time Traveller does not rescue the Eloi, nor teach them resilience and strength - unless he does so in his final disappearance, after the end of the story. But we see his own thoughts, his own feelings, the distance he placed between himself and the horrors of a future he feared and hated.

I enjoyed the book immensely. The roiling adventure combined with the intellectual science of the late 19th century is inspiring and pleasantly refreshing. Unlike the hard-lined, politicized dystopias of modern science fiction, Wells' "The Time Machine" plays with the ideas of peace versus conflict and the necessity of necessity. The Time Traveller's own view sees the technological and sociological progress of mankind as inevitably self-destructive, but the narrator intimates a desire to live for the best in life, to better ourselves and to seek greatness in spite of the danger of becoming the Eloi and the Morlocks.

It is a conflict of opinion that leaves the decision up to the reader.

If the book could be said to have any flaw, it would be its brevity, for as the story concluded, the one thing I desired was a continuation of the tale.

[ohernaes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The time traveler builds a time machine that takes him to year 802 701. There he meets the two forms humans have evolved into - the meek, cattle-like, vegatarians Eloi and the nocturnal, apelike, carnivorous Morlock. The two are opposed, and the time traveler takes the side of the Eloi, who " had kept too much of the human form not to claim my sympathy," but his intervention creates havoc.

[snukes-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I liked this book so much. I loved the simplicity of it. Why did the Time Traveler invent the time machine? Because he knew it was possible and he wanted to prove it. Nothing more complicated than that. What did he do with it once it was created? He went to see what the future held. Nothing more. The social commentary felt remarkably advanced, discussing what is essentially evolution and the celestial end of the world. I liked that there wasn't actually any romantic plot with Weena. I just all around liked it.

[auntieclio · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a seminal work of science fiction, and as such blazed the trail for the genre as a whole. Reading it over 100 years after initial publication, gives me a sense of understanding science fiction. While taking this into consideration, as well as being a product of the Victorian era, I still found The Time Traveler to be more than a little overwrought in this tale. One surprising thing I learned was that Kodak did indeed have a camera available in 1895 and HG Wells must have been very well informed.

[ariesblue · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

a good fictional novel i have read many years ago......
human race has evolved into two species, the leisured classes and the working class ...

[ricardob-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've watched many movie and tv adaptations of HG Wells Time Machine, but reading it is a totally diferent experience.

Some will call it science fiction, others social criticism but I find it to be an adventure; and what a beautifully told adventure it is.
The time traveler telling its journey into the unknown future is filled with wonderful details and very interesting ideas of mankind evolutions and legacies.

A classic that is great to read.

[breakerfallen · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm giving this a three mainly because of its place in literary history. As a story, I didn't like any of the characters' personalities or the social commentary imbedded in the Time Traveller's descriptions. It's still a great plot and an interesting read, though.