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The Time Machine
Scene from the 1949 film adaptation
Author	H. G. Wells
Publisher	William Heinemann
Publication Date	1895
Country	United States
Genre(s)	Science Fiction, Time Travel
ISBN	NA
Related

The Time Machine is an 1895 novel by H. G. Wells. The novel popularized the time travel theme and has inspired numerous other works of fiction including several film adaptations and comic book series. Considered a novella, the work is 38,000 works long and has twelve chapters. The book contains twelve chapters.

Plot

Chapter One: It is Thursday, and we are in the house of a man identified only as The Time Traveller—his name is never given. The narrator of the novel is one of the guests at a dinner party. Also present at this party are a psychologist, a provincial mayor, a medical man, a young man, and a friend of the Time Traveller identified as Philby. The Time Traveler speaks to his guests about time as a fourth dimension, through which we can travel. He shows his friends a small time machine on a table, and has one of his guests throw a switch. The tiny machine disappears. The Time Traveller leads them into another room, and shows them a larger, full-size time machine, which he says he plans to use to explore time. Most of his guests are skeptical.

Chapter Two: A week later, another Thursday, the narrator returns to the home of the Time Traveller in Richmond. Also there are the Psychologist, the Medical man, and some new guests--a newspaper editor named Blank, a journalist, and a quiet man with a beard. The Time Traveller is not there at first, but he has left a note saying that they are to start dinner without him. During dinner, the Time Traveller suddenly appears at a door, dirty and disheveled, wearing only socks on his feet, limping and tired. He greets his guests, and then disappears into another room. He returns in time to eat some dinner, telling everyone that he has been time traveling. After dinner, they retreat to another room, so that the Time Traveller can tell his story.

Chapter Three: The Time Traveler did not finish constructing his Time Machine until that very morning. A little after 10 o’clock he entered the machine and turned it on; when he turned it off and looked around, he noticed that the clock now said 3:30. He activated the machine again, and soon the days and years began rolling past. The building around him disappeared; the sun darted across the sky, and he soon estimated he was moving at about a year per minute. He saw large buildings being constructed and then torn down. He accelerated his Time Machine, and eventually noticed that a green lawn had appeared, with no buildings in sight. He slowed the machine down, still apprehensive for fear of stopping the machine at a time and place occupied by another object. When he finally stopped, the machine tumbled over and the Time Traveler was knocked on the ground. He got up and noticed nearby a large, marble statue of a “winged sphinx.” He saw some buildings off in the distance, and some small men began approaching him. He pulled his machine upright and got it prepared for a fast getaway, and then prepared to greet these men of the future.

Chapter Four: The crowd of people approached him without fear, and were very curious about him. They were small, frail, and talked and laughed among themselves in a language he did not understand (he soon learned a handful of words). They led him away, into a great hall, where they invited him to sit down with them and eat some fruit (dogs, horses, and most animal species were now extinct, he later learned). He noticed that the hall was in a dilapidated condition, and the people seemed fickle and indolent; each person became curious about him as soon as they saw him, but then they quickly lost interest, like a child, and turned their attention to some other pursuit. He noticed that there seemed to be little physical difference between men and women, and he speculated at the time (though he admits later that he was wrong) that this was because in a world of leisure mankind had lost the need for gender specialization or the family unit. He further speculated that since mankind had finally conquered nature, he had become indolent and passionless, and was likely in decline (though again, he later found out that his theory was wrong). The year, as indicated on the time machine dials, was 802,701. The Time Traveller wandered over to a nearby hill, where he got a look at the Thames River, and some other nearby structures.

Chapter Five: As night fell, the Time Traveller looked back in the direction of the winged sphinx monument, and saw to his horror that his Time Machine was no longer sitting on the lawn where he had left it. He rushed to the spot and searched frantically for his machine, but without finding it. He questioned some of the people rudely, frightening them, but they could not answer his questions. The next morning he examined the ground nearby, and concluded from some tracks that the Time Machine was taken inside the winged sphinx monument, which has a bronze pedestal at its base. He pounded on the bronze pedestal with a rock, but without results. None of the people he met will answer his question about the sphinx, and some are even shocked that he would ask. When he finally calmed down, he realized that he must gather more information about this world before he can find his machine. He noted that the landscape is dotted with large well openings, each with drafts of air being sucked down into the darkness; on peering in, he can barely hear a rhythmic thumping noise. He speculated that the wells are part of a large, underground ventilation system. Later, while exploring some of the ruined buildings, he spied some ape-like creatures running around in the darkness; they are afraid of him and run away, and he tracks one of them to a well opening. From this, he then speculates that the human race had divided into two distinct species--the Eloi, who live a life of luxury on the surface, who fear the darkness, and whom he thinks are descended from the privileged class; and the Morlocks, who live underground, are afraid of the light, and who are descended from the workers. He concluded that it was the Morlocks who took his machine, though he does not know why.

It is during these days that The Time Traveller befriended an Eloi woman named Weena; he saved her from drowning in a slow-flowing river, while her own people did nothing at all to help save her. In gratitude, Weena doted on The Time Traveller, and tried to answer many of his questions.

Chapter Six: It took him a couple of days after his first encounter with the Morlocks to muster up the courage to explore further. Weena protested, but he left her on the surface while he climbed down one of the shafts. The Morlocks approached him in the darkness, feeling his face and body, and are only frightened off when he lit a match. He noticed that the Morlocks have very large eyes, furry bodies, and look very inhuman. He sees machinery in the distance, and some half-eaten meat nearby, but in the darkness he could not see details. When a large crowd of Morlocks surrounded him, he became apprehensive, and made his way back to the bottom of the shaft, lighting matches along the way to keep the Morlocks at bay. He used up the last of his matches, but manages to climb to the top of the shaft (about 200 yards up). There he was greeted by Weena, and he collapsed, exhausted.

Chapter Seven: That night the Time Traveller became very worried about the intentions of the Morlocks, so he took Weena and began heading toward a Palace of Green Porcelain, which he had seen earlier off in the distance, and which he believed would provide a good defense against a Morlock attack. By nightfall they had not yet reached the Palace, and so they camped out to sleep. During the night he had time to think, and he realized now that the meat he saw the Morlocks eating was Eloi-flesh; the Morlocks had become cannibals. He does not really condemn them, since they are savages and only barely human; but when morning comes and no Morlocks have appeared, he resolved to build himself some weapons and a torch (to scare away the Morlocks), and then to find a way into the winged sphinx monument to recover his Time Machine. He planned to take Weena with him.

Chapter Eight: About noon the next day they arrived at the Palace of Green Porcelain, and began to explore. It was a museum, abandoned and decaying, but he could still identify many of the exhibits. Fascinated, he explored the museum, finding displays on geology, biology, and engineering. He found some old books, but they were decayed beyond the point of reading. He found a box of matches, still dry and intact, and managed to pull a metal lever off one of the machines, to use as a “mace” against the Morlocks. In one of the darker rooms they heard sounds that might have been Morlock. He found some dynamite, but it was no longer explosive. As night fell, he realized that he had still not found an impenetrable hiding place.

Chapter Nine: The Time Traveller and Weena began heading back just before dusk. They reached a forest which he knew to be about a mile across, and could hear and see Morlocks tracking behind them. He had been collecting some dry wood to make a campfire, and now he used that wood, and some matches he had found in the Palace, to start a fire at the edge of the forest, to keep the Morlocks at bay. He entered the forest, and eventually he and Weena stopped. They were exhausted, and after a small scuffle with some Morlocks, disoriented. He built a small campfire with the dried branches nearby and fell asleep. He woke a short time later, and found to his horror that the fire had gone out, and the Morlocks were all around him, clawing at his body. He reached into his pocket for his box of matches, but the box was gone--apparently stolen by the Morlocks. He swung about with his metal lever/mace, killing some Morlocks and injuring others. In all the confusion, Weena disappeared. The Time Traveller was saved when a forest fire approached--apparently caused by the fire he had set at the edge of the forest. The Morlocks ran about, confused and disoriented, and blinded by the little light the fire provided. The Time Traveller made his way to a small hill, from which he could see the Palace and regain his bearings; from that vantage point, he felt gratified that Weena had apparently died in the forest fire, rather than suffer the fate of the rest of her people.

Chapter Ten: The Time Traveller made it back to the hills where he had first joined the world of the Elois.

“I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes--to come to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed.”

But intellect, believed the Time Traveller, required hardship; without it, the human intellect atrophied. The workers underground, with their machines to maintain, were a little smarter than the luxury classes above; and so when food became scarce, they resorted to cannibalism.

The Time Traveller headed back to the White Sphinx, only to find that the bronze base of the statue was already open, and his time machine clearly visible inside--the Morlocks had even polished it for him. It was clearly a trap, but he felt safe with his matches; and the Morlocks still did not know the purpose of the time machine. He entered, and immediately the bronze doors closed, and the Morlocks attacked him. The matches, he found to his horror, were useless without the box; but he still managed to fight off the Morlocks, climb aboard the machine and activate it.

Chapter Eleven: The Time Traveler went forward in time, very fast. After millions of years, the sun stopped rising and setting, as the tidal forces had by then forced the Earth to stop rotating. He eventually stopped, and watched what was left of Earth life; he saw a giant crab eyeing him in the distance, and then turned to find a giant crab right behind him, so he quickly escaped by activating the time machine again. He eventually went to about 30 million years into the future; snow and cold were everywhere, and only a green slime indicated that life still existed. He had stopped during an eclipse; he saw a form moving in the sea nearby, but he activated his time machine, going back this time, to return home.

Chapter Twelve: The Time Traveller returned to his own time and stopped the machine. He was tired, but he heard his dinner guests, and went to join them, where he told them his adventure.

Most of his guests are skeptical, and the only evidence he can provide are some white flowers put into his pocket by Weena—the Medical Man cannot positively identify the species. The dinner guests go home. The next day, the narrator of the story returns to the Time Traveller’s house, and finds him preparing for another trip in the Time Machine, this time with more supplies. They talk for awhile, and then the narrator begins to leave. He remembers something, and hurries back to the room with the Time Machine; but just as he enters the room, there’s a truncated sound, a gust of air, and the Time Machine is gone, along with the Time Traveller. He wants to wait around to hear his friend’s account of this second adventure, but this time The Time Traveler never returns. The narrator reports he is telling this story three years later.

EPILOGUE: Did he go back or forward? Why didn’t he return? We don’t know. The narrator still believes in mankind’s future; though his friend, The Time Traveller did not:

“He, I know—for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made—thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so. But to me the future is still black and blank--is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story. 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.”

Related Works

In 1949, British television broadcast a one-hour adaptation of The Time Machine, with Russell Napier as The Time Traveler and Mary Donn as Weena.

In 1960, George Pal produced a film version of The Time Machine, with Rod Taylor as the Time Traveller, Yvette Mimieux as Weena, and Alan Young as Philby. In that movie, the characters of Philby and the narrator were merged. This movie expands on the book by allowing the Time Traveler some intervening stops in the 20th century, where he meets up with an older Philby during World War One, and then later meets the very old Philby in the later half of the century, just as the bombs of World War Three are about to fall on London.

In 1978, there was an American made-for-TV movie with John Beck and Priscilla Barnes.

The 1979 movie Time after Time postulated that H. G. Wells (played by Malcolm McDowell) was himself the Time Traveler that he described in his book. In that film, one of his dinner guests turns out to be Jack the Ripper, who uses Wells’s time machine to escape the authorities. Wells must then follow him into late 20th century America to bring him to justice.

In 2002, Hollywood made another film version of the story, with Guy Pearce as the Time Traveler (although in this film his name is Alexander Hartdegan, and he is American), and Samantha Mumba as Weena (renamed Mara). In this film, the Time Traveler is motivated to build his machine by the murder of his fiancé, which he hopes to travel back in time to prevent. He fails (she dies anyway), so he uses the machine to go forward to find out why. As in the 1960 film, he makes some intervening stops, this time in the early 21st century, before heading off into the distant future and the year 802,701. This movie also postulated yet a third human subspecies, who control the animal instincts of the Morlocks, and who are portrayed by Jeremy Irons. This film version was directed by Simon Wells—great grandson of H. G. Wells. The screenplay for this film gives partial credit to David Duncan, who wrote the screenplay for the 1960 film version.

In 1977, Richard Cowper wrote a sequel to The Time Machine, a short story called “The Hertford Manuscript,” in which The Time Traveler traveled back in time to 1665, and then enlisted the help of a lens grinder to repair some damage done to his machine by the Morlocks. Before it was finished, however, he contracted the plague and died.

External Links

Full Text -XahLee.org