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This page is about the HG Wells novel called "The Time Machine", if you're here for the Ray Bradbury story of the same name, it's not here
The Time Machine is a novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1895, later made into two films of the same name. This book is generally credited with the introduction of time travel using a time machine that allows an operator to travel purposefully and selectively.
The Book
Wells had considered the notion of time travel before, in an earlier (but unpublished) story titled The Chronic Argonauts. He had thought of using some of this material in a series of articles in the Pall Mall Gazette, until the publisher asked him if he could instead do a serial novel on the same theme; Wells readily agreed, and was paid 100 pounds on its publication in 1896.
The novel's protagonist is an amateur scientist simply called the Time Traveller (we never learn his real name, though, tantalizingly, he remarks that he wrote it in the dust in an abandoned museum in the distant future). Having demonstrated to friends that time is a fourth dimension, and that suitable apparatus can move back and forth in this fourth dimension, he constructs a larger machine capable of carrying himself, and sets off.
His journey forward in time takes him to the year AD 802701 where he finds an apparently peaceful, pastoral, Daoist future, filled with happy, simple humans who call themselves the Eloi. This appearance turns out to be deceptive. The Traveller soon discovers that the class structure of his own time has in fact persisted, and the human race has diverged into two branches. The wealthy, leisure classes appear to have evolved into the ineffectual, not very bright Eloi he has already seen; but the downtrodden working classes have evolved (or devolved) into the bestial Morlocks, cannibal hominids resembling albino apes, who toil underground maintaining the machinery that keep the Eloi – their flocks – docile and plentiful. Both species, having adapted to their routines, are of distinctly sub-human intelligence.
Soon after his arrival he rescues Weena, a female Eloi he found drowning in a river. Much to his surprise she is grateful to him and insists on following him. After some adventures and the eventual death of Weena at the hands of the Morlocks, the narrator returns to his machine and travels into the far future. There he sees the last few living things on a dying Earth, before returning to his time to tell his story to friends. Then he attempts to time travel again and disappears forever into time.
The story reflects Wells' political views; he was a committed socialist, and the narrator reasons that the state he sees is the outcome of capitalist class structures. The novel may also have influenced the movie Metropolis. He probably did not see it as an accurate portrayal of the future.
The Time Machine is in the public domain in the United States, Canada, and Australia, but does not enter the public domain in the European Union until January 1, 2017 (1946 death of author + 70 years + end of calendar year).
The text of the novel is available here (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/~emorgan/texts/literature/american/1800-1899/wells-time-188.txt).
An extract from the 11th chapter of the serial published in The New Review (May 1895) was not included in the book version, as it was thought too violent. This portion of the story was published elsewhere as The Grey Man.
The Grey Man begins with the Traveller waking up in his Time Machine after escaping the Morlocks. He finds himself in the distant future of an Earth that is unrecognizable, seeing kangaroo-like hopping creatures being attacked and eaten by a giant centipede that comes out of the ground. It is implied that these are the future forms of the Eloi and Morlocks, respectively.
Film versions
George Pal (who also made a famous "modernized" version of Wells' The War of the Worlds) filmed The Time Machine 1960. This is more of an adventure film than the book was; also the division of mankind results from mutations induced by a nuclear war during the twentieth century, and the Eloi speak English. The film was remade in 2002, starring Guy Pearce and Jeremy Irons and directed by Wells' great-grandson Simon Wells, with an even more revised plot. It garnered dismal reviews and was not very successful. In both movies the Eloi were given language abilities and a love affair between a female Eloi and the time traveller is part of the plot.
The earlier film is noted for its then-novel use of time lapse photographic effects to show the world around the Time Traveller changing at breakneck speed as he travels through time.
Sequels by other authors
Well's novel has become one of the cornerstones of science-fiction literature. As a result, it has spawned many offspring. Books expanding on Wells' story include:
- The Hertford Manuscript by Richard Cowper, first published in 1976. It features a "manuscript" which reports the Time Traveller's activities after the end of the original novel. According to his "manuscript" the Time Traveller disappeared because his Time Machine had been damaged by the Morlocks without him knowing it. He only found out when it stopped operating during his next attempted time travel. He found himself on August 27, 1665, in London during the outbreak of the Black Death. The rest of the novel is devoted to his efforts to repair the Time Machine and leave this time period before getting infected with the disease. He also has an encounter with Robert Hooke. He eventually dies of the disease on September 20, 1665. The story gives a list of subsequent owners of the manuscript till 1976. It also gives the name of the Time Traveller as Robert James Pensley, born to James and Martha Pensley in 1850 and disappearing without trace on June 18, 1894.
- Morlock Night by K.W. Jeter, first published in 1979. It is an odd steampunk novel in which the Morlocks, having studied the Traveller's machine, duplicate it and invade Victorian London
- The Space Machine by Christopher Priest, first published in 1976. Because of the movement of planets, stars and galaxies, for a time machine to stay in one spot on Earth as it travels through time, it must also follow the Earth's trajectory through space. In Priest's book, the hero damages the Time Machine, and arrives on Mars, just before the start of the invasion described in The War of the Worlds. H.G. Wells himself appears as a minor character.
- The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter, first published in 1995. This sequel was officially authorised by the Wells estate to mark the centenary of the original's publication. In its wide-ranging narrative, the Traveller's desire to return and rescue Weena is thwarted by the fact that he has changed history (by telling his tale to his friends, one of whom published the account). With a Morlock (in the new history, the Morlocks are intelligent and cultured) he travels through the multiverse as increasingly complicated timelines unravel around him, eventually meeting mankind's far future descendants, whose ambition is to travel into the multiverse of multiverses. Like much of Baxter's work, this is definitely hard science fiction; it also includes many nods to the prehistory of Wells's story in the names of characters and chapters.
- The Man Who Loved Morlocks and The Trouble With Weena are two different sequels, the former a novel and the latter a short story, by David J. Lake. Each of them concerns the Time Traveller's return to the future. In the former, he discovers that he cannot enter any period in time he has already visited, forcing him to travel in to the further future, where he finds love with a woman whose race evolved from Morlock stock. In the latter, he is accompanied by Wells, and succeeds in rescuing Weena and bringing her back to the 1890s, where her political ideas cause a peaceful revolution.
- In Michael Moorcock's 'Dancers at the End of Time' series, the Time Traveller is a major character, although his role mainly consists of being shocked by the decadence of the inhabitants of the End of Time.
- The Time Traveller makes a brief appearance in Allan and the Sundered Veil, a back-up story appearing in the first volume of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, where he saves Allan Quartermain, John Carter and Randolph Carter from a horde of Morlocks.
- The superhero known as 'The Rook' (who appeared in various comics from Warren Comics) is the grandson of the original Time Traveller.
- Philip Jose Farmer speculated that the Time Traveler was a member of the Wold Newton family. He is said to have been the great-uncle of Doc Savage.
- In the movie Gremlins, the Time Traveller's machine (the one from the 1960 movie) is briefly glimpsed at an inventor's convention.
Just to entangle reality and fiction further, H. G. Wells also appears as a character, aboard his own time machine in 1979 film Time After Time and the 1990s television series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. He also briefly travels in time with the Doctor in the Doctor Who serial Timelash, the events of which are said to inspire him to write The Time Machine. In Ronald Wright's novel A Scientific Romance, a lonely museum curator on the eve of the millennium discovers a letter written by HG Wells shortly before his death, foretelling the imminent return of the Time Machine. The curator finds the machine, then uses it to travel into a post-apocalyptic future.
External links
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The Time Machine
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