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The Time Machine
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1895 dystopian science fiction novella by H. G. Wells
"The Time Machine" is an 1895 science fiction story by H. G. Wells about a man who builds a machine to travel through time and discovers a dystopian future world. The novella is considered a landmark work that helped establish time travel as a central concept in science fiction literature.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- serialized fiction
- Author
- H. G. Wells
- Country of origin
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
- Main subject
- time travel
- Image
- The Time Machine (H. G. Wells, William Heinemann, 1895) title page.jpg
Show 20 more facts
- Commons category
- The Time Machine
- has characteristic
- debut novel
- publication date
- 1895-00-00
- topic's main category
- Category:The Time Machine
- inception
- 1895-00-00
- language of work or name
- English language
- title
- The Time Machine
- copyright status
- public domain
- set in period
- Victorian era
- official demo URL
- www.sparknotes.com/lit/timemachine
- work available at URL
- standardebooks.org/ebooks/h-g-wells/the-time-machine
- form of creative work
- novella
- first line
- The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us.
- last line
- 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.
- time period
- modernism
- place of publication
- London
- number of parts of this work
- 5
- volume
- 12
- editor
- William Ernest Henley
- influenced by
- The Coming Race
Sources (9)
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Encyclopedic overview
The Time Machine is an 1895 dystopian, post-apocalyptic, science fiction novella by H. G. Wells about a Victorian scientist known as the Time Traveller who travels to the year 802,701. The work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively forward or backward through time. The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now almost universally used to refer to such a vehicle or device.
Utilizing a frame story set in then-present Victorian England, Wells's text focuses on a recount of the otherwise anonymous Time Traveller's journey into the far future. A work of future history and speculative evolution, The Time Machine is interpreted in modern times as a commentary on the increasing inequality and class divisions of Wells's era, which he projects as giving rise to two separate human species: the fair, childlike Eloi; and the savage, simian Morlocks, distant descendants of the contemporary upper and lower classes respectively. It is believed that Wells's depiction of the Eloi as a race living in plenitude and abandon was inspired by the utopic romance novel News from Nowhere (1890), though Wells's universe in the novel is notably more savage and brutal.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “The Time Machine” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.