The Time Machine by H. G. Wells | Book Review | Maham Reviews

The Time Machine – The Foreseen World of Luxury, Ruin, and Communism.

The time machine is a simple imaginative story about a scientist with a limited number of characters, but rather more ideologies, and future speculations. Although not many of them are true and completely logical, many concepts lack factual authenticity and are not backed by scientific fact. But we can assume that his intention was not to give us a logical story, instead of a foreseen reality of where we are headed.

The Time Machine

Summary

It starts with Filby, the time traveler, whose name has been scarcely mentioned in the book, having a conversation about the fourth dimension, the possibility of time travel, and the benefits it would inherit for the researchers and common men with his fellows; a psychologist, Provincial Mayor, Medical Man, and the narrator of the story. The time traveler tells them about his invention and the experiment he is going to conduct – travel through time.

However, no one believes him except the narrator who is rather intrigued, not sure about the authenticity of his claims but intrigued. In the next conversation, when the traveler meets them after a week, he tells them about his journey through time.

He had traveled eight thousand years ahead in the future. The world he sees is nothing like he had imagined. He had assumed the future world to be so ahead in technology, health, and infrastructure. But the world was only based on vast unending green land. Moreover, the inhabitants were not even the humans but the descendants of the species, the creatures name Eloi, which was very fragile, and white, in his words, “and then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some further peculiarities in their Dresden china type of prettiness. Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek; there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears were singularly minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather thin lips…” Meanwhile, society was driven by the simplest lifestyle and desires to live, and enjoy life with loved ones with no concept of ownership, and property. Everyone lived on common ground and ate common fruit, as fruits were the only food left to them. All other foods and animals had apparently gone extinct.

Soon, he finds that under the land of the luxuries, liveliness, and pretentious peace was the world of the Morlocks, another descendent creature with a more inclination towards animal traits. Meanwhile, the story revolves around the time traveler rescuing his machine from the creatures and escaping the inevitable tragedies. 

Review 

The creatures are portrayed as beings with a decreased attention spans, gender-less, fragile white little creatures dressed in silky delicate costumes. If we think about it all for a moment, that’s exactly where we are headed. But then, it also refers to the class system, and inherited inequalities, and the troubles that can unfold. The author has depicted the rise of communism eventually with the equal distribution of the resources to the population. Their children were timid and physically weak than their parent Elois, and the reason speculated is the rarity of the danger, and less need for divided gender roles, as the balanced population is appreciated.

The traveler goes through it all, discovering their world and left ruins and making subjective remarks about the world. As the character goes through it all, he gives us a lot to think about. Many reasons to reconsider our path towards the life of luxury, the system of capitalism, and thriving for the development of technology to make life easier for us because it may actually be draining us of our intellectual abilities, and physical strength, eventually.

Overall, the book is very fast-paced with jumping perspectives and surroundings with provided specific descriptions about them. At times, it may get difficult to imagine the right setting and you may need some time to stop and re-read the previous paragraphs. I often found myself skimming and skipping through a few lines as they seemed crude.  But nonetheless, it’s a classic work of art by a renowned science fiction writer, and the story itself may have many loopholes, the plot may be missing a few things, but we should not forget that it is the story that paved way for following sci-fi stories, and eventually, movies that we all so dearly enjoy today. So, we should cut some slack to it here and enjoy it as it is by keeping the limitations of that era in mind. Meanwhile, as a story written in the year of 1880s, it seems very well thought and written. But the important thing is the speculations and what makes us reconsider our world, how related it is still today, as we can actually find many similarities in our current lifestyle and the speculated visions.

About the Author:

Herbert George Wells was born in 1886, Bromley, Kent, England, He was a famous English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian worldwide. The Time Machine is one of his best works, the War of the Worlds is equally admired, and some comic novels as Tono-Bungay and The History of Mr. Polly.

(The writer is a freelance creative-content writer with considerable experience while studying Communication Studies at Punjab University. Meanwhile, in case of work or query, she can be contacted at the email address, mahamamir046@gmail.com.)