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The Time Machine
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1895 dystopian science fiction novella by H. G. Wells
"The Time Machine" is an 1895 science fiction story by H. G. Wells about a man who builds a machine to travel through time and discovers a dystopian future world. The novella is considered a landmark work that helped establish time travel as a central concept in science fiction literature.
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Book · Open Library
- Author
- H. G. Wells
- First published
- 1895
- Editions
- 1,146
- Subjects
- Self-experimentation in medicine in fiction, Fiction, Time travel in fiction, Dystopias in fiction, Literature, Scientists, Classic Literature, Open Library Staff Picks
via Open Library
Wikidata facts
- Image
- The Time Machine (H. G. Wells, William Heinemann, 1895) title page.jpg
Show 10 more facts
- Commons category
- The Time Machine
- publication date
- 1895-00-00
- inception
- 1895-00-00
- title
- The Time Machine
- official demo URL
- www.sparknotes.com/lit/timemachine
- work available at URL
- standardebooks.org/ebooks/h-g-wells/the-time-machine
- first line
- The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us.
- last line
- 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.
- number of parts of this work
- 5
- volume
- 12
Sources (9)
via Wikidata · CC0
~38 min read
Article
The Time Machine is an 1895 dystopian, post-apocalyptic, science fiction novella by H. G. Wells about a Victorian scientist known as the Time Traveller who travels to the year 802,701. The work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively forward or backward through time. The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now almost universally used to refer to such a vehicle or device.
Utilizing a frame story set in then-present Victorian England, Wells's text focuses on a recount of the otherwise anonymous Time Traveller's journey into the far future. A work of future history and speculative evolution, The Time Machine is interpreted in modern times as a commentary on the increasing inequality and class divisions of Wells's era, which he projects as giving rise to two separate human species: the fair, childlike Eloi; and the savage, simian Morlocks, distant descendants of the contemporary upper and lower classes respectively. It is believed that Wells's depiction of the Eloi as a race living in plenitude and abandon was inspired by the utopic romance novel News from Nowhere (1890), though Wells's universe in the novel is notably more savage and brutal.