The basic plot of The Time Machine is quite simple. A gentleman scientist living near
the turn of the century invents a machine capable of traveling through time
with its passenger able to control when it stops. The scientist tests out his
invention, moving more than 800,000 years into the future. There he finds the
Eloi, a race of small humans, living peacefully and contentedly among meadows,
forests, and very old, crumbling buildings. The people live on a simple diet of
mostly fruit and seem to have no purpose in life and no challenges to solve,
though the scientist later discovers another race, the menacing Morlocks, that
live underground and prey on the Eloi at night. The scientist has many
adventures and encounters plenty of danger while exploring this world, but he
eventually makes it back to his own time.
The whole story is told from the perspective of an unnamed
narrator who simply refers to the scientist as the Time Traveller. He’s a
frequent guest at the Time Traveller’s home for dinner, where he hears of this
fantastic invention and, later, the amazing journey. The rest of the dinner
guests think that the Time Traveller has made the whole story up, though the narrator
is more inclined to believe him.
I was fascinated by the details of Wells’ imagined far
future world. For a time, many future-predicting books presumed that humanity’s
ever-advancing technology would someday produce a utopia of sorts. More recently,
dystopia is all the rage, with most futuristic novels imagining a devastated
and doomed earth, created by man’s ever-increasing greed and consumption. Wells
wrote this novel (originally published as a serial) way back in 1895, and the
future world he foresaw was one where humans have created such a perfect
society that eventually, they evolved to a race that no longer needed
intelligence or strength because there were no challenges left to solve
(granted, this is 800,000 years into the future, much further than most authors
delve). I read that Wells was a socialist, so perhaps this was his view of
socialist perfection.
Of course, the novel later reveals that this new world is
not as perfect as it first seems. There is plenty of action and suspense here, as
the Time Traveller and his Eloi friend, Weena, explore the future world and
strive to stay safe from the Morlocks (now I understand why Sheldon on The
Big Bang Theory TV show has nightmares
about Morlocks!) I enjoyed listening to Wells’ imaginative descriptions and
adventures, but what I most liked was the thought-provoking nature of the
novel, as I tried to imagine how Wells came to this unusual interpretation of
the future. It was fun listening to this classic along with my husband; now I
want to see the movie adaptation!
Listening Library
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