The Time Machine

This book is not really about the time machine, as the title suggests, it’s about a time traveler.

In the beginning, along with a dinner party of the time traveler’s guests, we are told about his amazing invention – a miniature time machine. The time traveler sends his miniature time machine into the future. Of course, there is no way to validate this actually happened. To his dinner guests, it just disappeared. They think that is just a parlor trick – a prank – and accuse him of such.

He’s hurt, and frustrated. They left, leaving loud guffaws and incredulousity following in their wake.

The time traveler already has a human-sized time machine. He’s built it, and it sits silently in his workshop.

He has an idea! He wrote a note for his housekeeper, went to his study and locked the door.

The time traveler turns on his machine, and then commences its inaugural voyage.

At first it is jolty, and he gets sick, he’s not accustomed to the motion. As he learns and gets more accustomed to the levers of the machine, he slowly increases his rate of travel. Moving forward in time he eventually slows down and stops in the year 802,701.

He’s landed in a grassy meadow, in the shadow of a giant statue of a sphinx –like creature. The abrupt stop tossed him unceremoniously onto the soft grass, and he’s dazed momentarily.

He discovered several hundred humanoid-like creatures. They were very small and childlike. They didn’t understand his words, or his concerns about their simple worry-free life.

They were the Eloi, and lived together in a commune type of situation. Their diet consisted of fruit, and was provided for them. It magically appeared. They did not grow it themselves, nor did they even wonder where it came from.

One of them, a young female named Weena, became very attached to the time traveler after he saved her life. She had been drowning in a river, and he jumped in to save her. She followed him everywhere from that day forward. He tried to teach her his language, and she, after much persuading on his part, tried to learn his. Neither one of them was very successful.

There were other creatures in this place –Morlocks. They lived underground in great caves. At first, the time traveler thought they were the ones who were a lower order of creature, one devolved into an ape-like creature.

But, what he soon realized was that they in fact were the ones in charge of things. They raised and fed the Eloi and then ate them!

He walked with Weena to an abandoned building and found a library. He wanted to find out the history of the world between 1800 and 802,701. But he was sorely distraught when he touched the books that remained, for they disintegrated to dust in his hands.

The time traveler’s time machine was stolen by the Morlocks, and he had some difficulty retrieving it, as they had hidden it a cavern underneath the sphinx. However, they didn't know he could escape their time via his machine. So he sneaked in and turned the levers on and escaped.

He decided to travel forward once more and he watched the sun getting bigger and bigger, and then fading completely away, he watched the planet get cold and become covered with ice.

He saw a frozen beach. A giant crab, eating the carcass of a dead humanoid creature. He shivered at the cold and at the ghastly sight.

The note which the time traveler had left for his housekeeper had told her to have supper ready a week from his departure, and to invite the same guests back.

They were there at the appointed time, once again haranguing him. He was late and he was crazy and how rude of him to not show for his own dinner party.

He burst through the door, disheveled and spent. Shaking, he poured himself a glass of wine, and then another, as his guests looked at him speechless.

And then he recounted to them the tale you've just read.

This was a great book. I don’t know why I hadn't read it until just this year. The story starts out a little slow. But have patience, you will be rewarded. 

The Time Machine, H. G. Wells, 1895

This post is part of the 31 Days of Bibliophilia series.