Is Time really the fourth dimension? If so,
can we move back and forth in it, just like any other dimension? Nowadays, this is a major topic in Quantum
Physics. But H.G. Wells was
contemplating it way back in the 1890’s.
Of
course, the big question is what kind of world we’d find by traveling forward
in time. Super geniuses hopping around
in flying cars? World peace? Or something else that’s a bit less advanced?
What’s To Like...
This is a groundbreaking book. It isn’t the first novel to deal with Time
Travel (the Wikipedia list is here), but it is the first one with this topic to
be a major bestseller, and it is fair to say it spawned the whole time Travel
genre.
If
you don’t like books with a gazillion characters to keep track of, The Time Machine is for you. There is the Time Traveller himself (his name is
never given), and Weena, his love interest in the far-flung future
(802,701 years, to be exact). That’s
about it, except for the TT’s present-day companions, and the various unnamed
Eloi and Morlocks.
The Time Machine starts a bit slow, opening
just as the Time Traveller makes it back to our time, and his friends and
acquaintances greet his chrono-hopping claim with understandable
skepticism. But as he begins to tell his
tale, things get interesting and zip along at a nice pace up through the very
end.
The two things that surprised me about the book were its shortness (128
pages) and the political undertone to it.
H.G. Wells sided squarely with the working class, and the
inherent separation between Labor and Capitalism is the basis for his
predictions of the future in The Time
Machine.
The main time-jump is the first one, from now to 802,701 years from
now. But the Tme Traveller also makes
some further jumps, ending up 30 million years in the future. Those “end-times” scenes are powerful. The storyline’s ending (the Epilogue, actually) is superb.
Kewlest New Word. . .
Cicerone (n.) : a
guide who gives information about antiquities and places of interest to
sightseers.
Excerpts...
“At last, hot and
tired, I sat down to watch the place.
But I was too restless to watch long; I am too Occidental for a long
vigil. I could work at a problem for
years, but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours – that is another matter.” (loc. 493)
But to me the
future is still black and blank – is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual
places by the memory of his story. And I
have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers – shrivelled now, and
brown and flat and brittle – to witness that even when mind and strength had
gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man. (loc. 1213)
Kindle Details...
The copyrights have expired on a
number of pieces of classical literature, including The Time Machine. So you can
download it for free at Amazon, anytime you want.
“But is it not some
hoax? Do you really travel through time?” (loc. 1189)
The
bulk of the story is told in first-person narrative, which is not the most
exciting way to tell a tale. You are
assured that the Time Traveller will survive because, well, he’s back here
telling you about it.
I
read The Time Machine because I have a
modern-day sequel to it – Stephen Baxter’s The Time Ships
– sitting on my TBR shelf, and it seemed logical to read the “Book One”
first. Allowing for the fact that it is
“early days Science Fiction” (the genre has evolved considerably since then),
it was a pleasant, ahead-of-its-time
read, with lots of good points to ponder.
8 Stars. Subtract
1 star if you like your Science Fiction with lots of
gratuitous violence and/or sex. This is speculative sci-fi, not Space Opera.
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