Review of the book

“I grieved to think how brief the dream of human intellect had been. It had committed suicide.”- The Time Machine, H.G. Wells 1897. This quote from the book describes how the Time Traveler felt about the human race when he traveled 800,000 years into the future. H.G. Wells portrayed the future as a split world with predators and prey. There are two races: the Eloi and the Morlocks. Their simple but entirely complex society causes the Time Traveler to have many troubles, but yet he learns so much about what the world might be like in the future. This science fiction book is very interesting, and it causes one to think about the future, and what our human race will be like.

The book begins with a bunch of men sitting in a room, discussing the possibility of moving in the fourth dimension: time. Every one is quite apprehensive about the whole idea except for one man who is known in this book as the Time Traveler. He believes time travelling is possible, and even shows them a model of the time machine that he is building. As days go by, they once again have their weekly meeting, and the Time Traveler comes in quite rugged looking and starts telling them about the journey he has just made, 800,000 years into the future. After an interesting and very exhilarating journey in his machine, he comes to a land and is greeted by strange people. They are small, speak with joyous gentle tones, and all act childish. This is quite a disappointment to the Time Traveler, for he was expecting a new human race far superior to the one in his time. As the creatures, known as Eloi, bring him to their main building, the White Sphinx, he makes an observation. “I saw great and splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any building of our own time, and yet, as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist” (Wells 21). He also notices that the world looks like a giant garden with fruit and greenery flourishing everywhere. As a day went by, he came back to the hill where his time machine was, only to find it had vanished.

This is when the Time Traveler starts his journey to find it and get it back. When he saves a young Eloi girl, Weena, from death, he gets a companion for his journey. The Time Traveler believes that the Eloi have taken it, but he soon changes his mind. He encountered the Morlocks: white, slimy creatures with red eyes that live in the Under-world and happen to come out at night. After many scary encounters with these Eloi-eating beasts, he goes to the Palace of Green Porcelain, where he hopes to find supplies to defeat the Morlocks, and any clues about the where about of his machine. At night, on his way back to the White Sphinx, he has a deadly encounter with the Morlocks at night when the forest he and Weena were sleeping in gets set on fire. The Time Traveler searches through the flames for his very close friend, but alas, Weena has died. Defeated he makes his journey back, and gratefully finds his machine. As he is getting into the machine to return back to his own time, the Morlocks attack him and in a hurry, he accidentally sends himself more into the future where there is little life. He goes farther into the future, to see what the world will become and finds it a vast beach close to the sun with only one creature. Disappointed and the world’s fate, the travels home and his story ended. No one believed him except one man and when he came to ask the Time Traveler about it, he has already traveled into time, and hasn’t returned for three years.

Even though this book is science fiction, the characters behave as one would normally. Most people would be apprehensive about the plausibility of traveling in the fourth dimension. The men at the beginning discuss that it is entirely not logical, and even with our technology today, most people would agree. A break in the fourth dimension would be highly impossible and not many people would support the idea, just as in this book. I think that the Time Traveler, over the course of the book, matures greatly. He is very scared and apprehensive in the beginning of the book, but over a course of time, he begins to really contemplate how things got this way and becomes more confident. He is fearless enough to fight off the Morlocks, and he even kills some. At the beginning, he just kind of accepts the way the world has become, but never stops to think about what the human race has done to become like this. He comes up with logical conclusions and inferences that really help him survive later in the world.

Through this book, you can really get an idea of what kind of ideals and beliefs H.G. Wells has, and how he expresses them thoroughly throughout his writing. H.G. Wells is a prominent believer in evolution, as one may suppose by reading some of his work. You can tell by the way he portrays the future. He sees the human race decreasing over time and becoming less intelligible and forming into different kinds of species. This sort of is like how evolutionists believe that we were formed from monkeys; he may believe that we will go back to an animal-like thing in the future. He also believes that the world will live for much longer than any Christian believes. Not only his he more than 800,000 years into the future a majority of this book, but he goes even further: about 30 million years. Because I am a Christian, I believe that Christ will return before then. He will rapture all the believers, but the nonbelievers will stay on earth for a tribulation. Eventually there will be a new heaven and earth, but I do not think that the setting of the book portrays what it will look like.

The setting of this book really helps the reader visualize what the Time Traveler is experiencing. He describes it as a flourishing place, with many ruins, but it was all so beautiful. This contrasts with the way our earth is now, which causes some things to be done differently than we do now such as eating. If the author had portrayed the future in another setting, maybe a high-tech world with flying cars and robots with a metallic looking world, this whole book would have been different. H.G. Wells has a very different kind of setting compared to most futuristic books, which really makes it a whole lot more interesting.

I would highly recommend this book to all who are considering reading this. It mixes thoughtful insight, science, and some action together to make it a worth while book. Even though it is fiction, the characters are quite believable and they help keep the reader interested. If I could change one thing about this book, I would not let Weena die. She was my favorite character in the book, and not only did she help him the whole way, she did not deserve to have such an awful fate which was slightly caused by the Time Traveller. Although H.G. Wells states some controversial ideas in his book, I think he did a good job writing it, and I would be very interested in seeing more of his science fiction work.