The Time Machine (Annotated Keynote Classics)

By H. G. Wells, Michelle M. White and J. D. White

"For an indefinite time I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials again I was amazed to find where I had arrived."

Embark on a journey hundreds of thousands of ye

• Language: English
• Publisher: Keynote Classics
• Release date: Oct 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781949611359

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. 

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The Time Machine

An Invention

by

H. G. Wells

With Annotations by

Michelle M. White and J. D. White

Table of Contents

Introductory Key to

The Time Machine: An Invention

The Time Machine

An Invention

Topics for Discussion or Essays

Selected Works of H. G. Wells

Bibliography

Introductory Key to

The Time Machine:

An Invention

The concept of traveling to different time periods is well known in modern pop culture, but in the late 1800s, it was a pretty novel idea for most people. H. G. Wells was not the first author to write about time travel, but The Time Machine brought the idea to more readers and made the idea of using a machine or vehicle to jump from one time to another stick with people enough that it is now one of the most popular types of science fiction. The Time Machine also helped make speculative fiction a more accessible form of social commentary, which is what H. G. Wells came to be known for. It was his first of many novels, and it stirred up controversial social philosophies without making any directly positive or negative statements about them. The book, like Wells, did not fall in line with the clear morals that people expected at the time. It helped to break new ground in early science fiction, setting the stage for more stories like it from Wells and many writers after him. Despite The Time Machine being one of the first stories of its kind, it does not necessarily fit with what you might expect from modern science fiction. More recent time-travel stories that you might be familiar with tend to involve personal conflicts or attempts to change history or the future. This novel is quite different, taking on a more observational role, rather than having characters actively fighting for their present or future lifestyles. There have been a few movies made out of this story, but those could also give you inaccurate expectations for this novel. This introduction will help you to begin this book with an understanding of the time and context in which it was written and to find deeper meaning in the story.

Herbert George Wells, called Bertie in childhood, was born September 21st, 1866, to Sarah Neal and Joseph Wells at their home in Bromley, Kent, England. He was their fourth child, and he had two older brothers and one older sister. This family of six was crowded into a small home above a cookware shop, which was owned and poorly run by Joseph. Sarah worked as a lady’s maid at a wealthy family’s estate called Uppark. She taught Bertie how to read and write at a young age. When Bertie was eight years old, he broke his leg, which turned out to be the most important event of his childhood. While he was healing and unable to walk, his only source of entertainment was books. He read voraciously and was introduced to all kinds of subjects that interested him. He liked to travel the world in his mind this way. By the time his leg was healed, he was hooked and continued to seek out new information and stories throughout his life.

Bertie’s mother was strictly Protestant, and she tried to teach her children to accept biblical teachings without question; however, as Bertie read about the world and different philosophies and ideologies, he questioned his mother’s teachings more and more. He still believed in God, but throughout his life, he developed his own ideas about the world and God’s influence on it. He was deeply interested in the physical sciences in school. His early education was split between home and different schools. At 14, he went to Thomas Morley’s Commercial Academy to learn a working trade, and later, he attended the Normal School of Science, which was much more suited to him. Scientific research offered very few prospects for steady income, but his family needed money. His brothers did well as drapers, selling different kinds of cloth, so Bertie was expected to learn the trade and become a draper too. He hated working the long, tedious hours required of a draper’s apprentice, so he begged his mother to let him go back to a school where he could study what he wanted. When he failed his apprenticeship, she finally relented.

In his late teens, Bertie lived with his mother at Uppark, where he observed the stark differences between the working class servants like his mother and the upper class family who employed them. While there, Bertie was allowed access to the family’s library, and he read as much as he could. Both the literature and the experience of living there gave him ideas about social and economic classes that stuck with him and greatly influenced his later writing. During this time he was accepted into the Normal School of Science to study and to earn a little money as a student teacher. He began writing for the Science School Journal, and the earliest version of his time-travel story was published there as a series of short stories called The Chronic Argonauts.

Another major influence at that time was his biology teacher, Thomas Huxley, who had studied under Charles Darwin. Wells absorbed Huxley’s new ideas about evolution, which are evident in many of his works, including The Time Machine. Huxley, along with Wells’ other instructors, had enormous influence on the development of Wells’ world ideology. You may recognize references to theories of evolution in many descriptions of the future life encountered in The Time Machine. Wells grew attached to the idea that consciousness’s constant motion through time is how people come to change and grow mentally and emotionally, similar to how a species evolves by continually adapting to its environment. He thought that life is experienced by our immaterial consciousnesses while our bodies are only vehicles for our minds. In addition to the idea of time travel, this worldview also allows for the suggestion of a kind of consciousness after death. These concepts are explored in a variety of ways in Wells’ works as he continued to expand on them throughout his life.

In his young adulthood, Wells went to live with his aunt and his cousin, Isabel, whom he later married. They were infatuated with each other, but they had very different personalities and expectations, so their marriage couldn’t last. Although he remained faithful to Isabel, Wells became enamoured with one of his students, Amy Catherine, whom he nicknamed Jane. After Jane was no longer his student, he divorced Isabel to be with Jane, but Isabel remained a lifelong friend. Jane was much more suited to Wells’ interests because she also craved information and enjoyed exploring new ideas with him. She supported his writing, and it was in the early years of their marriage that he wrote The Time Machine.

The story went through several iterations before being published as this novel. In the seven years after Wells first published The Chronic Argonauts, he played with the idea through multiple revisions and published The Time Traveler’s Story as a serial in two different versions before finally publishing it as the book, The Time Machine. The different stages of revision highlighted different aspects of the characters, setting, and makeup of the future world. As you read, you will notice many symbolic and direct references to social, political, and scientific ideas relevant to readers at the time. Their placement and emphasis in the story were crucial for Wells because he wanted his novel to make a point about the world. To recognize these references and understand his point, you will benefit from knowing the economic and cultural background that was familiar to Wells and his audience in England and the United States in the late 1800s.

Although the majority of The Time Machine is set in the distant future, it begins and ends in roughly the time period in which Wells was writing it. When a story is set within another story this way, it is called framing. This literary device can have many purposes, including to provide context. You will notice many references to contemporary scientific and political ideas which provide background for the story. The narrator introduces the anonymous Time Traveler and presents an outside perspective on his story. As the Time Traveler explains himself, he and the other characters make references to several locations, people, and ideas that would have been familiar to Wells and his contemporary audience, including the setting in and around London, the new underground railway, and famous scientists and scholars of the time. To further modern readers’ understanding, important references are given footnotes. You can look for mentions of the economic and social class hierarchy and the innovations, environmental effects, and societal changes following the industrial revolution. The theory of evolution and the study of biology, which were relatively recent at the time, are among the more recognizable themes for modern readers.

This book was written and takes place less than 40 years after Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species and his theory of evolution. In that time, several advances were made in biological research. Wells was greatly fascinated with this field, and his study under Thomas Huxley expanded his understanding and interest. Huxley helped refine and promote Darwin’s ideas, and he passed those on to Wells. Much of Wells’ writing, including The Time Machine, made use of these concepts in both fiction and nonfiction. His references in this novel to human evolution tend to focus not on the past, as was a common subject of biological study at the time, but on the future. Many scholars thought of the present human form as the peak of human evolution, that our current physicality and mental ability have reached perfection and will not continue to evolve going forward. After learning about evolution from Huxley, Wells believed that the process was ongoing and that humanity’s nature and intellect would continue to change. Some of Wells’ ideas about the future of humanity are explained in this novel; however, this fictional depiction does not show his actual expectations for the future because like most speculative fiction, it shows only one possibility and is used to make a point to readers about the present more than about the future.

Speculative fiction, which speculates what the world might be like if certain aspects of it were different and which includes most science fiction and fantasy, was not new in