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Linking Young Minds Together
     Volume 1 Issue 17 | December 3, 2006 |


  
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Classic Corner

The Time Machine

By H. G. Wells

Author -----H. G. Wells
Country ---England
Genre ---- Science fiction novel
Publisher ---- William Heinemann
Released ---- 1895

The Time Machine is a novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1895, later made into two films of the same title. This novel is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposefully and selectively.

Background:
Wells had considered the notion of time travel before, in an earlier (but less well-known) 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 write a serial novel on the same theme; Wells readily agreed, and was paid 100 pounds on its publication by Heinemann in 1895. The story was first published in serial form in the New Review through 1894 and 1895.

Story in brief
The novel's protagonnist is an amateur inventor living in London identified simply as The Time Traveller. Having demonstrated to friends using a miniature model that time is a fourth dimension, and that a suitable apparatus can move back and forth in this fourth dimension, he completes the building of a larger machine capable of carrying himself. He then immediately sets off on a journey into the future.

The Time Traveller details the experience of time travel and the evolution of his surroundings as he moves through time. While travelling through time, his machine allows him to observe the changes of the outside world in fast motion.

He observes the sun and moon traversing the sky and the changes to the buildings and landscape around him as he travels through time. His machine produces a sense of disorientation to its occupant, and a blurring or faintness of the surroundings outside the machine.

His journey takes him to the year A.D. 802,701 where he finds an apparently peaceful, pastoral, Taoist future, filled with happy, simple humans who call themselves the Eloi. The Eloi are about four feet tall, pink-skinned and frail-looking, with curly hair, small ears and mouths and large eyes. Males and females seem to be quite similar in build and appearance. They have high-pitched, soft voices and speak an unknown language. They appear to be quite unintelligent and child-like and live without quarrels or conflict.

Soon after his arrival he rescues Weena, a female Eloi he finds drowning in a river. Much to his surprise she is grateful to him and insists on following him.

The Time Traveller is greeted with curiosity and without fear by the Eloi, who seem only vaguely surprised and curious by his appearance and lose interest rapidly. He disables the time machine and follows them to their commune and consumes a meal of fruit while trying to communicate with them. This proves somewhat ineffectual, as their unknown language and low intelligence hinders the Time Traveller from gaining any useful information. With a slight sense of disdain for his hosts' lack of curiosity and attention to him, the Time Traveller decides to explore the local area.

After some adventures and the eventual death of Weena at the hands of the Morlocks, the narrator manages to get to his machine, reactivate it as the Morlocks battle him for it, and escape them. He then travels into the far future, roughly 30 million years from his own time. Menacing reddish crab-like creatures slowly wander the blood-red beaches, and the world is covered in "intensely green vegetation." He continues to make short jumps through time, seeing the Red Giant of a sun grow redder and dimmer. Finally, the world begins to go dark as snowflakes begin to fall, and all silence falls upon Earth. In the very end of the Earth, all life has ceased, other than the lichens that still grow on rocks, and a Kraken-like creature, roughly the size of a soccer ball, that slowly moves onto shore.

Feeling giddy and nauseous about the return journey before him, he nevertheless boards his machine and puts it into reverse, arriving back in his laboratory just three hours after he originally left. Entering the dining room, he begins recounting what has just happened to his disbelieving friends and associates, bringing the story back full cirlce to the his entrance in chapter 2. The following day, the unnamed narrator returns to the Time Traveller's house. There, he finds the Time Traveller ready to leave again, this time taking a small knapsack and a camera. Although he promises the narrator he will return in half an hour, three years pass and the Time Traveller still remains missing. What happened to him, and where he ultimately
ventured, remain a mystery.

Read the book to find out…..

 

 

 

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