The Time Machine

First published in 1895, H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine begins with an extraordinary proposition: that time itself can be traversed, carrying its traveller into futures more distant than the human imagination can comfortably grasp. The unnamed Time Traveller journeys to the year 802,701, where humanity appears to have divided into two strange descendants: the delicate, childlike Eloi, who live above ground, and the subterranean Morlocks, whose existence conceals a darker truth about the civilisation that produced them. As wonder gives way to unease, the journey becomes an investigation into the possible fate of society, technology and the human species.

Combining scientific speculation with social criticism, Wells uses the distant future to examine class division, industrial exploitation and the complacency of late Victorian civilisation. Its compact narrative and unsettling vision helped establish the modern science-fiction novel, while its questions about progress and inequality remain strikingly relevant. Both an adventure in the unknown and a cautionary parable about the direction of history, The Time Machine is one of the defining works of speculative fiction.

From the book

“We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity.”

— H. G. Wells, The Time Machine

On The Time Machine

“The Time Machine is one of the great founding texts of modern science fiction.”

— Brian Aldiss, science-fiction writer and critic