After reading The Invisible Man (1897), I was curious about other H.G. Wellsā work so picked up this title up. This was his debut novel and was shortish and fairly famous and is early sci-fi ā all good things in my book. I enjoyed it more than The Invisible Man, mainly because the protagonist was much more likable. (I know that I donāt have to like the protag to enjoy a story, but it doesnāt hurt if you do like him or her.)
So this novella features the lead character called only The Time Traveller. (Heās given other names in later adaptations but in the original version, he is just called this.) Heās is an inventor and scientist of a type, and is describing his adventures at a small dinner party with a handful of friends. Itās an effective framing device for the story and allows Wells to show how the other guests react to what The Time Traveller describes in his adventures.
As with The Invisible Man, there is quite a bit of solid science talk here to explain how time travel could theoretically work, and in the early stages of testing, The Time Traveller only travels a few hours of time. As he gets braver, he continues to travel forward hundreds of years where he meets two new species of beings, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi are small surface-dwelling vegetarian peoples who are peaceful but not very active and have little initiative. (Was Wells criticizing the veggie diet here? Was he a big meat-eater in his real life?)
On the other hand, the Morlocks are larger warrior-type people who live entirely underground their whole lives, and itās clear to the reader who Wells admires more. This is also a pretty political novel, just as The Invisible Man was in some ways, since itās very referential to the social-class-based system: the weakened posh Eloi up above in the sunlight living a charmed life whilst the Morlocks are stuck working in mines under the surface of the earth, producing all the power for the Eloi. Itās not subtle at all, but thatās not to say that itās not a powerful set-up at the same time.
The narrative continues with The Time Traveller moving even further forward in time, over centuries, to see how the Earth continues to develop and as the years drop off, he sees Earth collapse under the fading sun as society and its peoples fade away as the temperatures drop and freeze. Like I mentioned, itās not subtle or hopeful, but if you read it in the political subtext, then itās pretty interesting.
Wells himself was a futurist with a progressive view and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. He was trained in biology at the Royal College of Science (you can see his science training in the writing), and he was an outspoken Socialist (also obvious in his writing that Iāve read). He married but messed around, including having a three-year affair with Elizabeth von Arnim and one with author Rebecca West.
Iām enjoying these reading adventures with Wells and he was pretty prolific so there is more from which to choose. Which one is next?…