The Time Machine (AD Classic Illustrated)

By H.G. Wells and Frank R. Paul

Testing his time machine for the first time, a Victorian scientist finds himself in the year 802,701 ad. Encountering a childlike people called the Eloi, who live in futuristic buildings and have no need of work, the Time Traveller speculates that the human race has evolved to live in a peaceful utopian society. But when his time machine is stolen by a brutish subterranean people called the Morlock, the Time Traveller must enter their realm in order to continue his journey through time. H. G. Wells is credited with the popularisation of time travel, and introduced the idea of time being the "fourth dimension" a decade before the publication of Einstein's first Relativity papers. The Time Machine also reflects on Wells' views on the antagonism between social classes resulting from different economic and social interests, and the evolution of the human condition. Included is The Grey Man, which was originally written as chapter 11 to The Time Machine, but was removed before publication, and later published as a short story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Engage Books
• Release date: Jun 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781927970782

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 (AD Classic Illustrated)

[branimal · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A brilliant inventor creates the world’s first time machine. After explaining its inner-workings to guests of his weekly dinner parties, he arranges for a follow up meeting about a week later. When the group convenes, they find the scientist exhausted and weathered. After cleaning up and consuming a well deserved meal, he sits down to tell of his journey over 800,000 years into the future.

Damn, this book is old. In fact, I’m certain it is the oldest novel I've yet to read clocking in at one hundred and twenty one years since initial publication. Wells seemingly went to great lengths to explain to the reader how a theoretical time machine would operate and I often wondered if Wells had built one himself based on how detailed his explanations and theories were. It would certainly explain the theory that the author himself is the main character.

That isn't to say it’s too philosophical and technical, there is quite a bit of action and danger. The events in the future carried with it a constant sense of urgency. Whether the traveler is trying to understand his surroundings, avoid capture or trying to find his missing time machine, the action moved at a brisk pace. In fact, a memorable moment had the traveler racing forward in time, worrying that a pillar or some kind of concrete structure may now be erected in the spot he occupied when he initially began his journey. Would he become a part of the object when he slammed on the brakes or would his machine and body simply explode? The story would be a hell of a lot shorter if he ended up like Han Solo encased in carbonite.

While I enjoyed the world building and the spectacle of time travel, I found myself re-reading passages over and over again as I struggled with Wells’ writing. I’m sure prose like this was probably commonplace back in the late 1800s but it was a major hurdle for me in 2013. However, you probably don’t need my endorsement or recommendation, this book is certainly a classic that inspired generations of sci-fi writers - it’s just not something I think I’ll find myself picking up again.

Cross Posted @ Every Read Thing

[themythbookshelf · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Time Machine proved to be a lovely, albeit short, read, even for someone who isn't that much of a science fiction enthusiast, but that's probably because I haven't read much of the genre. First published first in 1895, this powerful little book shattered literary ground with a single man, the anonymous Time Traveller, and his "squat, ugly, and askew" machine of "brass, ebony, ivory and translucent glimmering quartz" (110). The tale is told from the perspective of one of the man's acquaintances, who is invited to dinner to hear of his adventure upon his return. Naturally, the Time Traveller's account dominates most of the book, though I found that these two contrasting perspectives complemented each other nicely.The adventure of the Time Traveller consists more of him running around to recover his stolen time machine than anything else. The descriptions of the "post-human humans" he meets are, for this reason, limited, and so is the depth to which the landscape is explored. This read reminded me of two other works, both classics in their own right--Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies. The former vaguely resembles this work in prose and descriptive style, while the latter, in its representation of the Eloi race. The Time Traveller describes the Eloi people, who we are the ancestors of, as innocent, pure, and child-like race, having degenerated into ignorance as a result of privilege and laziness. As the traveller reflects, "there is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change" and they serve as a wonderful representation of this (97). A dangerously similar description is found in Bartolomé de las Casas' anthropological account of the natives, which is recounted from the perspective of a European missionary. (The difference, however, is that de las Casas enthusiastically viewed them as perfect receptors of the Christian religion, while here such qualities ignite the total opposite reaction).Furthermore, as this is the first of Wells' works that I read, I'm not sure if this is his natural prose — it was elegant but a little too verbose for my taste. Nevertheless, it was acceptable because it suits the character of the Time Traveller rather perfectly. All in all, you do not have to be a sci-fi fan to appreciate this book, though I'm sure it would help.

[tess_schoolmarm · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a novella about a time-traveller who firstly embarks to about 8270 AD (?) to the world of flesh eating Morlocks and peace-loving Eloi. I liked this book much better than The War of the Worlds as I think it has withstood the test of time a little better. I loved the vocabulary of Wells, much larger than today's writers and I even had to look up a few words to add to my word journal. Sci-fi is really not my genre at all (I usually despise it), but due to the writing and the short length of this book, it kept by rapt attention and I read it in one sitting. 88 pages

[jonfaith · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Regina Spektor was on NPR today speaking with Terry Gross. The NPR interviewer accomplished no favors. She asked woefully stupid questions about the Soviet Union and its relationship to WWII. this originated when Spektor noted that growing up in the USSR she always felt that the Great Patriotic War had happened recently, given its absorption into the collective consciousness. Emigrating to the Bronx, she was struck that such wasn't a universal condition. Such made me think of The Time Machine.

As with most archetypes of speculative fiction, the premise had been closeted in my brainpan before opening the book, yet, this one succeeded, especially as a treatise on species within or over time. I'm curious what Spengler thought of this?

[coach_of_alva · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I think this must have been one of the first novels to warn that the future might not be a Utopia. I found convincing because the unhappy future wasn’t caused by the establishment of an evil dictatorship or the destruction from a catastrophe. No, it came about as the logical climax of certain social trends, trends that are continuing in our time.What I have learned listening to audio versions of Wells’ classic science fiction novels, which I read when I was young, is that he not only an idea man but also a good novelist, with much skill at scene setting, world building, sharp characterizations, and sheer story telling.Scott Brick portrays the Time Traveler as an upper-class adventurer with a sneer in his voice that his terrible experiences do nothing to remove.

[ca8bookwyrm · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another classic that I took too long to read...

I enjoyed this, but am glad (I think) that I read it after seeing the movie. The movie was nothing like this, and I could read the book and be pleasantly surprised at the differences, rather than watching the movie after knowing the book and being incredibly disappointed.

It is a product of its era, however, and does read in the literary fashion that is common in other classics. If you like that style - as I do, when I'm in the mood for it - then this is a good book to read.

[themulhern · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I believe this is the first of Wells' science fiction novels. It was published shortly before the turn of the century. The initial portion consists of a bunch of after-dinner chat about the science of time travel but the bulk of the book is the Time Traveller's tale of his experiences. In this part, the events follow very rapidly and somewhat chaotically upon each other, while the Time Traveller tries to make sense of the world he has arrived in. This book was intended to be a critique of the existing social situation in Wells' own time. Since the Time Traveller can not speak the language of the people of the future, and knows nothing of their history, he can only speculate about the true nature of their situation and how it came to be. He reminds his audience of this frequently, and thus Wells is not required to make his future entirely sensible or coherent, which is a nice trick. It _is_ hard for a modern reader to understand how the situation which the Time Traveller finds himself in could have come to pass. Wells writes well, and, as seems typical with his books, the Time Traveller readily admits his terror and distress at the situation in which he finds himself.The book ends abruptly, but very well and on a somewhat poignant note.In the museum in which the Time Traveller finds himself, there seem to be an excess of artifacts from the 20th century. Given that he has travelled to the year 800,000+, the items of the 20th century should not seem so significant.

[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.

[theampersand · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this one as a teen, but it's different, and, in some ways, better than I remember it. "The Time Machine" is, in some ways, an efficiently composed manly-man adventure story that comes complete with monsters, cool machines, and a beautiful, playfully sexual female companion. But in other ways you its a profoundly Modernist text that ably reflects the intellectual currents of its time. Both Darwin and Marx loom large here. Wells's take on human intelligence and endeavor seem directly drawn from the more muscular, violent interpretations of Darwinism: his deceptively peaceful future seems to contain a lesson about the necessity of struggle and suffering in human lives. Meanwhile, the future that the time traveler glimpses might also be described one of the possible fates that might, in the very long run, await a class-stratified society. I don't know too much about the author's politics -- though his character seems to have a low opinion of communism -- so it's hard for me to tell if this aspect of "The Time Machine" has more to do with socialist critique or the author's Englishness. Perhaps it's the latter: there's something about the Eloi, for all their tropical fruits and brightly colored robes, also reminded me of the sort of gently pastoral little folk you sometimes meet in British fantasy literature. After that, the book gets really wild, as the time traveler rockets billions of years into a far future where Earth has become both uninhabitable and almost unrecognizable. The images that Wells presents here are both memorably bizarre and desolate, and it's here that the book really earns its place in the cannon of dystopian science fiction. Indeed, for all the future's beautiful novelty, loneliness seems to be the emotional chord struck most often here. From being the only man with any need of his wits among the Eloi to being the human left to witness an earth taken over by strange, monstrous creatures, to being the only man at his dinner party who really believes that he has traveled in time, the time traveler is very much by himself at almost every stage of this book. Recommended as both a well-written story and an artifact of sorts from another intellectual age. Be careful what you wish for, Wells seems to be telling his readers: human progress doesn't always come as advertised.

[ameise1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Although this story was written in 1895 and one should Wells pay tribute about his vision of the future, the story do not grabbed me really. He described his landing in a country where there is only harmony and peace. At closer inspection there was still a shadow world. This should be the life of the rich and poor, which is not fully convinced me. He also flew in the distant future, where there were only giant crabs etc..It is probably due to me that this book is not really one for me.

[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.

[shelley.s · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Time Machine 4/5I really really liked this book, it was short and sweet and i loved it. It keeps you gripped and reading despite it being so short. I flew through it enjoyed every moment but didn't have that disappointment when i released id come to the end (it looks longer because of the notes at the back) as i found it was rounded off nicely (as i also found with The Isldand of Dr. Moreau) Defiantly will be reading more Wells this year!

[paakre-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the first book I read all the way through on a Kindle, and watched my progress in "locations" instead of pages. Do all time travel books become about the history of technology and man's relationship to it? The narrator is a Victorian gentleman who reports on his trip to the future non stop, with no pauses, and no dialogue. It is hard to believe that a group of men, the other characters from his time period, no matter how stalwart, would listen to such a long story without interrupting once and questioning some of the details. But still, since I am reading time travel books (When You Reach Me, A Wrinkle in Time) I wanted to try the granddaddy of them all.

[lovinglit · 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.

[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.

[booklove2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm trying to read some of the books that have such an influential impact, and I figure this might be one of them. If you already have a vague idea of a book because pop culture has mentioned it so much, then yes, it's probably influential. Maybe it was the unique yet diverse ideas that Wells had for each of his early books that made them influential. Also, Wells as a scientist probably made these books important, influencing his ideas and giving him the motivation to write them. I liked 'The Time Machine' much better than I thought. I never knew there was more than the Morlocks in the plot before reading. I loved all of the time traveler's ruminations on what might have happened to the earth and human beings through time. I especially loved the visions while the time traveler is in the time machine. The book reminded me of 'At the Mountains of Madness' by Lovecraft. And it also seems like the yin to the yang of Journey to the Center of the Earth' by Jules Verne but I don't want to spoil the plots by saying why. I love all three of these books... they should all be on the shelf side by side.

[msaucier818 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This very short novel is the classic birth of science fiction writing. The backdrop of time travel is used to discuss the ideas of how mankind and different economic classes of people will develop and play off of one another. The Time Traveler guesses that over time, the aristocrats or Eloi had become so used to living off the hard work of the working class Morlocks that they became complacent and lazy. In the end, they lost all drive and purpose and were fearful of the Morlocks who could only come out in the dark and would kidnap the Eloi to eat then. I found the story to be fascinating and I could not put it down until I finished. Wells was way ahead of his 19th century world and I really cannot wait to read another of his stories.

[sweetiegherkin · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A group of Englishmen sit around theorizing about the (im)possibility of a fourth dimension and time travel. One of them claims he has built a time machine. They all meet again another day, with the time traveler entering the room looking disheveled before embarking on a long story about his adventures travelling into the future.So I was very much looking forward to reading this book, as I had never read anything by H.G. Wells before and this book is considered a science fiction classic (perhaps even arguably the science fiction classic). Unfortunately, I found myself rather disappointed with it. For starters, I just didn't find it that interesting; it didn't really hold my attention. It took an embarrassingly long time for me to get through this slim book because I couldn't focus on it for long. Mostly I couldn't get past how it was VERY much a "tell" rather than a "show" book, with 90 percent of the story being one long narrative from the time traveler. I prefer books that paint a picture rather than simply being talked at by one rather bland character with little personality. Also, maybe because I've read a decent amount of more recent science fiction, this one didn't have the usual appeal of using a speculative idea to talk about the very real issues of today. I think that Wells was trying for that, but I struggled with the transition from "arcane class system" to "thousands of years in the future, cannibalism!" The logical leap just wasn't there. Although I was trying to appreciate its place in science fiction history, this book fell flat for me. I wish I had better things to say about it, but I'd much, much, much rather read anything by Margaret Atwood or Ursula Le Guin for something compelling and thought-provoking -- and would recommend those authors' books over this one.

[robert.zimmermann · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Second time reading it, and I think I enjoyed it even more this time around. I'm a big Wells fan and thoroughly enjoyed this story. It's short, but there's a great adventure within its pages with some commentary on man, as well. I wouldn't be opposed to reading it some time in the future, again.

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

The Time Traveler looks you in the eye and tells you a fantastical tale of the future. And why shouldn't time travel be possible, the book proposes, if it is just another dimension? We listen to his story of another world where mankind has evolved or perhaps devolved, we see his future. Or is it our future?

I haven't read anything by H.G. Wells until now, even though I profess to love science fiction. And I'm glad I finally read this - not because I particularly love the story, but for the way I can see how it has influenced recent books I love. I can see why it is classic, almost timeless, in the way it uses thoughts on human nature and the potential of human progress in this story.

I appreciate how it doesn't try to utilize science to make time travel plausible, but rather takes it on literary faith using two mysterious levers and the time travel machine.

The plot is fairly straight-forward, the discovery and slow reveal of the new world and the Time Traveler's hypothesis on how things came to be.It was straight-forward, but interesting. Not exactly engaging because I found myself putting it down intermittently, but definitely interesting. Thought-provoking.

It's not a difficult read. And the themes are now common in tv shows and other scifi books. But still... this book is worth reading, or at least worth a skim.

2.5 stars because it was good, but not great. It was interesting and thought-provoking, but not mind-blowing. It's just another perspective into how science fiction has been influenced.
Recommended for people who like science fiction and wonder where the thoughts of time travel came about. If you liked a Wrinkle in Time and you've grown up a bit, you'll want to read this.

[iwriteinbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

So, last week your friend had a few gentlemen, all learned men, over for cocktails and conversation. He pulled some sort of elaborate parlor trick by which he made a trinket disappear before the party’s eyes. Thinking him a grand magician, indeed, you meet at his house, again, to find the host nowhere in sight. As dinner is about to be served, your man of the hour stumbles in the front door, covered head-to-toe in scrapes and dirt. In one giant breath he tells you fantastic, daring, and quite frankly, unbelievable tales of time travel and life threatening heroics.Welcome to The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. Said to be one of the first, and still creepiest, science fiction thrillers of all time, the short story is essentially a monologue on culture, disguised as the whimsy of time travel.Because the story itself is so short and the basics of it rely on the element of surprise, I’ll stop there on the details.I’ve recently found myself reading the Victorian classics where I’ve always stayed a bit clear of them in the past. Of course, one trip into a Wells book and a reader quickly realizes that it wasn’t all lace and stuffy parlors. He most certainly held no punches regarding his thoughts on the status-quo.Through a series of now antiquated, then cutting edge, revelations, he steam rolls over evolutionary predictions and brings pointed accusations at his peers and countrymen, regarding social economics. Allegories both beautiful and sinister could aptly apply to London (or New York), today, those same questions of moral responsibility framed technologically, socially and spiritually.I have always loved the story but I don’t think I have read it in its entirety in a long time. It’s a great story and I found myself shaking my head and wondering what Wells would think of our technologically dependant, still socially divided society.

[trilliams · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

You're all Morlocks.

[schlau-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Listened to the Alien Voices production of this work which made the tale come alive. Love those guys. RIP Leonard.

[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.

[polarbear123_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Enjoyable and easy to read, this is also relevant today. The haves and the have nots stand out in our society and wells has predicted this. As with some of his other predictions will he be accurate about our ultimate fate?

[thefallingalice · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Der ZeitreisendeDie Erzählung beginnt zum Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts, wo es dem Protagonisten des Buches gelingt eine Maschine zu bauen, die ihn durch die vierte Dimension tragen soll: Die Zeit.Und das soll sein einziger Name werden: Der Zeitreisende. Von Euphorie erfüllt berichtet einer Versammlung ungläubiger Freunde und Bekannter von seiner Erfindung. Doch niemand nimmt sein Gerede wirklich ernst. Zeitreisen?Ihre Meinung soll sich jedoch ändern, als er eines Tages völlig zerkratzt und verschmutzt auftaucht. Noch aufgeregt berichtet er von seinem Abenteuer:Die Zeitmaschine brachte ihn ins Jahr 802.701. Kaum hatte er sich vom Schreck und von den Unannehmlichkeiten der Reise erholt, kam es auch schon zum Erstkontakt mit den Bewohnern. Was ihm berichtet wird, fasziniert ihn vollkommen. Die Erde wird von lediglich zwei Schichten bevölkert wird: Den Eloi und den Mordocks.Die Eloi bevölkern die Erdoberfläche. Sie scheinen glückliche und zufriedene Wesen zu sein, die ihrem Alltag fröhlich und naiv entgegensehen. Ihnen scheint es an nichts zu mangeln, sie müssen sich keine Sorgen machen. Nur die Angst vor der Dunkelheit lässt sie des Nachts nicht ruhig schlafen.Denn unterirdisch leben die Morlocks. Sie kommen nur in der Dunkelheit an die Oberfläche. Sie verbreiten Angst und Schrecken. Dort, wo sie herkommen gibt es keine Nahrung und oft verschleppen sie die unschuldigen Elois. Sie sind bösartig und grausam. So glaubt der Zeitreisende.Science Fiction als GesellschaftskritikWells´ Roman gilt als Pionierroman der Science Fiction insbesondere im Gebiet des Zeitreisens. Diesen Roman ordnet er selbst zu seinen „scientific romances“, die die ersten drei Romane seines Schaffens umfassen und heute in das Genre der Science Fiction eingeordnet werden können.In seinem Roman versucht Wells eine zukünftige Welt zu beschreiben, die zunächst als eine Art Utopie erscheint. Doch so oberflächlich der Zeitreisende im Roman zunächst das Jahr 802.701 betrachtet, muss auch er später feststellen, dass seine Vermutungen und die Schilderungen der Eloi nur wenig Wahrheit beinhalten.Denn geht man tiefer und nähert sich der eigentlichen Wahrheit, muss man feststellen, dass die Welt, die der Zeitreisende dort betreten hat, einem Schlachthaus ähnelt. Was früher Menschen waren, sind heute nur noch verschrumpelte Wesen. Die zu Zeiten des Zeitreisenden noch viel gelobte Technik und die ausgefeilte Sprache als Mittel zur Kommunikation sind verkümmert. All das entstand aus der immer größer werdenden Schere zwischen Arm und Reich. Die einen schwingen sich Herrschern über die anderen auf. Damit kritisiert der Autor auch zu seine Lebzeiten gesellschaftlichen britischen Verhältnisse.Jedoch hat seine Mahnung auch heute nicht viel an seiner Aktualität verloren.Ein zeitloser RomanDie Zeitmaschine ist ein durchaus zeitloser Roman.Wells wählte für seine Erzählung ein weit entferntes Jahr. Er verzichtet auf Beschreibungen von möglicher technischer Geräte in der Zukunft, die einen Roman oft unglaubwürdig machen – spätestens wenn seine Jahreszahl für die Menschen zur Wirklichkeit geworden ist.So schafft er es – nicht letztendlich auch durch eine großartige Sprache – die Glaubwürdigkeit des Romans auch über Jahrzehnte und Jahrhunderte aufrecht zu erhalten. Die Geschichte passt in jede Zeit, kann von jeder neuen Generation mit dem größten Vergnügen verschlungen werden und verliert nichts von seinem Charme und seiner Aktualität.So kann der Autor sich auf das konzentrieren, was wirklich im Vordergrund stehen soll: Der gesellschaftliche Wandel und die Probleme die damit einhergehen können. Und dadurch, dass der Autor nicht mit seiner Kritik spart und immer wieder Menschen zum Nachdenken anregen kann, gibt es vielleicht ein kleines Fünkchen Hoffnung auf eine bessere und verantwortungsvollere Zukunft. Aber nur vielleicht.

[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.

[sjpluvsms · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Said to be the first time travel novel ever, a Sci-Fi classic with Mr. Hubert George Wells at his finest.A hugely enjoyable book that flows off the page, and my favorite ever book.

[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.

[sparkleandchico · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I probably should've read this years ago. Whilst intriguing to a certain degree, ultimately it leaves one feeling depressed. But then that is what happens to people who entertain evolutionary ideas on any level. Where is hope for the future if we are at the mercy of the elements and if there is no Higher Power controlling world events? Anything could happen if that were the case....right? Would you want to leave yourselves and your children to the determination of fate or even to successive governments who really don't have much of a clue what will happen or why....

Thank goodness we have the Bible which tells us what will happen and that there is a God who is in control. We don't need to be afraid of the future unknowns as it is all written down for us in God's Word. We won't end up as either airheaded, lighthearted, delicate beauties or as dark, underground, cannibalistic rejects as depicted in this book....unless God wills it! We can trust Him to do what is best for us and for our future eternity in heaven.

That said, it was an enjoyable read and I did want to know what happened to "The Time Traveller" at the end. But as the author died long ago, I guess I'll never find out! The book is clean; free of bad language, violence and sexual content. There are mentions of cannibalism but not in graphic detail.