H.G. Wells: The Time Machine
Hello! Once again, I've come to spread some Wellsian joy. I know that you're all so excited that you can't contain yourselves so let's get to it! Yes, I do realise that I'm talking to the imaginary audience in my head again, but take that as your regular reminder that I'm a few fries short of a Happy Meal. I'm barmy but not as barmy as Barnabas the Barmy from Harry Potter who tried to teach trolls ballet (his tapestry is across from the Room of Requirement just FYI) and yes, I'm aware that is quite a jump. What do Harry Potter and The Time Machine have to do with one another? Absolutely nothing although it does illustrate that my brain moves in mysterious ways.
Moving on! I've chosen yet another classic Wells text that illustrates what an influential writer he was. If you haven't read my previous post on The War of the Worlds and want to gain a bit of insight into Wells as an author then you can find it here: H.G Wells: The War of the Worlds.
For a start, I have a bit of background for this here famous novel. The Time Machine was originally published in serial form in The New Review from January to May of 1895 before being gathered into a single work in the same year. Prior to his work on The Time Machine, Wells had examined notions of time travel in two earlier stories that were unfinished. In 1888, he published Chronic Argonauts from April to June in the Science Schools Journal, a student magazine put out by the Royal College of Science. This was actually the first appearance of a machine used to travel through time and involved a scientist named Nebogipfel who invented and used it. Nebogipfel is the precursor for the Time Traveller in Wells's later novel. A newly written version, which loosely linked elements of an account together, was called The Time Traveller's Story from March to June of 1894 in The National Observer. This story introduced the Eloi and the Morlocks, suggesting that the Eloi were the descendants of the aristocratic leisure classes. No conclusion was written for it as at that time as Wells had been contracted to rewrite the narrative and add bits to it to be published the following year in The New Review.
The Time Machine introduced certain concepts that have survived to enter modern pop culture in one way or another. While this novel introduced the notion of a time machine, it was far from the first to focus on travelling through time. Time travel has existed as an idea since antiquity, although not always in ways with which we're familiar. The idea of time passing without a person's knowledge is a common enough narrative device. Typically, a character fall asleep only to discover upon waking that the world they knew has changed drastically. Such an example of this would be the tale of Rip Van Winkle.
The alternative way of moving forward in time typically involves a character journeying to a special place that is magical or otherwise otherworldly. Usually these narratives involve characters spending what seems like a relatively short period of time in such a place but discovering that many years have passed in their home. To name just a few examples, such stories can be found in Hindu mythology, Japanese tales (Urashima Tarō), and in Irish mythology in the story of Tír na nÓg.
There were also old concepts about going backwards in time typically with a dream sequence or going to bed. A relatively modern example of such can be seen in A Christmas Carol when Ebeneezer Scrooge takes a trip with the Ghost of Christmas Past.
The idea of a machine that travels in time (either forward or back) has become pretty commonplace now but of course, it was unique to Wells at the time. He also differed from his contemporaries because of his visions of the future as he based them on very contemporary Victorian ideas. When the Time Traveller moves far into the future to view the Earth as it comes to an end, he is drawing on ideas involving entropy and the heat death of the universe. Such ideas are based around the laws of thermodynamics, which are still used today (although don't take my word as gospel) and because of them, it is believed that the sun's mass will increase and turn it into a red giant. It's also believed that Mercury and Venus will be swallowed by the star as it expands. Plant life will die for the most part, as will most animal life and the atmosphere would grow thinner. When the Time Traveller travels into the far future, he observes something very like this, the Earth becoming locked with one side facing the now red sun.
This particular scenario in science-fiction is described as Dying Earth and it has its own sub-genre within the wider science-fiction genre. We like to watch the Earth die in the far future because we're bizarrely morbid creatures. In the case of The Time Machine, it isn't just the Earth that Wells likes to show dying but also mankind as we know it. The Time Traveller initially travels to 802,701 AD where he discovers the descendants of humans in the form of the Eloi and the Morlocks, and I'll talk more about those in a moment. When he leaves the Eloi and the Morlocks, the Time Traveller makes a number of trips to the future, some of which were deleted after publication in novel format. There was a particular trip that was added as padding when it was serialised where he encounters kangaroo-like creatures that seem to be the further descendants. Finally, the world becomes even more unrecognisable, reducing the animal life to large crabs and finally to a blob-like creature. Which brings me on to my next point.
Another contemporary belief when Wells wrote The Time Machine was that if something could evolve into a new form then it could also go back the other way and decline, becoming a simpler, less complex organism. This idea was called degeneration theory. These days, degeneration is accepted in medicine in the case of what are known as 'degenerative diseases', which cause the body to decline such as in the case of Alzheimer's, Multiple Sclerosis and even cancer. T. H. Huxley (known as Darwin's Bulldog) believed that if the world would inevitably cool to the point of freezing then during the cooling period, simpler organisms would adapt and survive rather than humans. Wells attended lectures by Huxley at the Normal School of Science and was greatly influenced by him.
Based on Huxley's ideas of degeneration, Wells showed a future where humans no longer existed but were replaced by simpler and simpler organisms from the humanoid Eloi and the ape-like Morlocks down to blobs that bore no resemblance to man. However, in the case of the Eloi and the Morlocks, Wells wasn't simply showing the degeneration of organisms but was also highlighting what known as 'social Darwinism'. Wells believed that social structures could affect the future of humanity, specifically the class structure.
The Time Traveller posits that the Eloi are the descendants of the Victorian upper classes, those who did not have to work and lived lives of leisure. On the other hand, the Morlocks who dwell underground are viewed as descendants of the lower classes due to the fact that they work with the machines, tend to the Eloi and have adapted to living in darkness. At the time of writing, many working class people were being forced to live in subterranean conditions and deprived of light, and Wells showed that the Morlocks might be the logical result. The names of the two species might provide some further insight into these social ideas. 'Eloi' is the plural of 'Elohim' in OT Hebrew, which means 'lesser gods'. 'Morlock' has far more uncertain origins. It resembles 'mollocks', a word for 'miner' (underground!), and the Scots word for 'rubbish'. It might also come from the 'Morlachs', a group of rural Serbs and Croatians, who were basically regarded as backwards or primitive. It's entirely possible that all of these terms influenced the name, but all of them have negative and low-classed meanings.
Somehow, The Time Machine has managed to maintain popularity and fame in current popular culture and has had a great deal of influence, despite being removed from its original cultural context of over 100 years ago. The key thing about the novel that allowed it to survive up to the present day was its popularity in its own time. The question is, what made The Time Machine so popular so that it could endure? Well, there are plenty of factors that could have contributed to it and we'll never know for sure unless we get a time machine, travel back to 1895 or so and conduct some surveys.
However, some things that we do know is that it dealt with contemporary fears involving evolution, degeneration and the end of the world. It was also far enough in the future that it couldn't easily be dismissed and even today, it is still far enough removed that we can't say that something like that may not arise. At the same time, it provided insight into society of the time, namely in regard to the class system and the over reliance upon certain individuals to provide for society as a whole. Even today, we can relate to that as their are people who work the land, process food and manufacture goods, and if these people vanished, society as a whole would be unable to provide for itself. Think of what happens when a strike occurs and you get the picture. Think about the miners' strikes in the UK (most recently the major one from 1984-85) or even the many recent transport strikes in Ireland. Those in society who benefit from such labour don't take it well when the providers stop providing.
Aside from those factors, Wells also did something that was unusual at the time but which can still interest present readers. Thanks to Huxley's influence, Wells made the effort to make science marketable to the masses in what would now be termed 'pop science'. Rather than using very technical arguments and examples, Wells provided explanations and created scenarios that made science interesting and more accessible to those outside of the scientific community. While some of the science has since been proven inaccurate, much of it is still valid and it provides a reader with engaging material. It also made it easy to adapt to visual media, which helped immortalise it. It should also be noted that it has a cliffhanger of epic proportions, even by today's standards because what on earth happened to the Time Traveller?!
Well, technically Stephen Baxter provided an explanation in the sequel, Time Ships, which was authorised by the Wells estate for the 100th publication anniversary in 1995. It's technically canon and I haven't read it but it sounds totally wild!
So now that I've blathered on for a year and a day, I should get to why this novel is influential. This is what you've all been waiting for kids!
1) Time machines
Not only was Wells the first writer to use a device for time travel but he was also the first to name it (duh, he was the first!) and it happens to have stuck. We are forever indebted to Wells for coining the term 'time machine' and automatically linking every use of it to the original 1895 narrative.
2) Adaptations and inspired narratives
The Time Machine has been turned into a teleplay, a whole host of radio adaptations and broadcasts, films, a CD audio drama (made in 1994 starring Leonard Nimoy), comics and graphic novels, and a whole host of unauthorised sequels.
It has inspired video games and has been paid homage to in episodes of various TV shows including Wishbone and Futurama.
3) Doctor Who
An eccentric scientist uses a machine that can travel through time while accompanied by a more 'primitive' female who dotes on him (soon to be her, woot!), hm... sounds oddly familiar, I wonder why? Golly gosh! Could it possibly be inspired by... The Time Machine.
There's actually a comic strip story that names a man who's implied to be the Time Traveller from Wells's story. Wells himself actually made an appearance in Timelash (broadcast in 1985) where he had an encounter with the Doctor and it was implied that he wrote The Time Machine as a result of the events that he witnesses. Which came first, the Time Traveller or the Doctor? In the real world, that's a pretty easy question to answer.
4) Back to the Future Franchise
An eccentric scientist uses a machine that can travel through time... wait a second, this is some serious déjà vu going on. Okay, we're minus a female companion who doesn't really understand our scientist and he's got the crazy hair that seems to align him with Albert Einstein, but let's face it, it reeks of The Time Machine.
----
Now, I could list many, many different time travel narratives that have popped up over the years and owe a legacy to Wells in one way or another and that's just in regard to The Time Machine. Wells wrote many influential narratives and honestly, he got everywhere like a bad rash. Well... with fewer negative connotations. I could talk about awakening a certain itch in humanity's imagination but I don't think I want to stretch this metaphor, thanks.
On that note, I've said all that I'm going to say about The Time Machine (and good riddance, you say, you imaginary people in my head) but I will blather on about Wells again with more on degeneracy and the bestiality of man when I write all about The Island of Dr Moreau. I can't make any promises about when that'll happen and in the meantime, I may well write about a whole manner of other things because I have been reading many, many books of late and I want to talk about all of them at once so we'll go where my weird brain takes me.
Congratulations if you managed to make it down here because I do talk a lot of strange nonsense. Ciao for now.
Moving on! I've chosen yet another classic Wells text that illustrates what an influential writer he was. If you haven't read my previous post on The War of the Worlds and want to gain a bit of insight into Wells as an author then you can find it here: H.G Wells: The War of the Worlds.
For a start, I have a bit of background for this here famous novel. The Time Machine was originally published in serial form in The New Review from January to May of 1895 before being gathered into a single work in the same year. Prior to his work on The Time Machine, Wells had examined notions of time travel in two earlier stories that were unfinished. In 1888, he published Chronic Argonauts from April to June in the Science Schools Journal, a student magazine put out by the Royal College of Science. This was actually the first appearance of a machine used to travel through time and involved a scientist named Nebogipfel who invented and used it. Nebogipfel is the precursor for the Time Traveller in Wells's later novel. A newly written version, which loosely linked elements of an account together, was called The Time Traveller's Story from March to June of 1894 in The National Observer. This story introduced the Eloi and the Morlocks, suggesting that the Eloi were the descendants of the aristocratic leisure classes. No conclusion was written for it as at that time as Wells had been contracted to rewrite the narrative and add bits to it to be published the following year in The New Review.
The Time Machine introduced certain concepts that have survived to enter modern pop culture in one way or another. While this novel introduced the notion of a time machine, it was far from the first to focus on travelling through time. Time travel has existed as an idea since antiquity, although not always in ways with which we're familiar. The idea of time passing without a person's knowledge is a common enough narrative device. Typically, a character fall asleep only to discover upon waking that the world they knew has changed drastically. Such an example of this would be the tale of Rip Van Winkle.
The alternative way of moving forward in time typically involves a character journeying to a special place that is magical or otherwise otherworldly. Usually these narratives involve characters spending what seems like a relatively short period of time in such a place but discovering that many years have passed in their home. To name just a few examples, such stories can be found in Hindu mythology, Japanese tales (Urashima Tarō), and in Irish mythology in the story of Tír na nÓg.
There were also old concepts about going backwards in time typically with a dream sequence or going to bed. A relatively modern example of such can be seen in A Christmas Carol when Ebeneezer Scrooge takes a trip with the Ghost of Christmas Past.
The idea of a machine that travels in time (either forward or back) has become pretty commonplace now but of course, it was unique to Wells at the time. He also differed from his contemporaries because of his visions of the future as he based them on very contemporary Victorian ideas. When the Time Traveller moves far into the future to view the Earth as it comes to an end, he is drawing on ideas involving entropy and the heat death of the universe. Such ideas are based around the laws of thermodynamics, which are still used today (although don't take my word as gospel) and because of them, it is believed that the sun's mass will increase and turn it into a red giant. It's also believed that Mercury and Venus will be swallowed by the star as it expands. Plant life will die for the most part, as will most animal life and the atmosphere would grow thinner. When the Time Traveller travels into the far future, he observes something very like this, the Earth becoming locked with one side facing the now red sun.
This particular scenario in science-fiction is described as Dying Earth and it has its own sub-genre within the wider science-fiction genre. We like to watch the Earth die in the far future because we're bizarrely morbid creatures. In the case of The Time Machine, it isn't just the Earth that Wells likes to show dying but also mankind as we know it. The Time Traveller initially travels to 802,701 AD where he discovers the descendants of humans in the form of the Eloi and the Morlocks, and I'll talk more about those in a moment. When he leaves the Eloi and the Morlocks, the Time Traveller makes a number of trips to the future, some of which were deleted after publication in novel format. There was a particular trip that was added as padding when it was serialised where he encounters kangaroo-like creatures that seem to be the further descendants. Finally, the world becomes even more unrecognisable, reducing the animal life to large crabs and finally to a blob-like creature. Which brings me on to my next point.
Another contemporary belief when Wells wrote The Time Machine was that if something could evolve into a new form then it could also go back the other way and decline, becoming a simpler, less complex organism. This idea was called degeneration theory. These days, degeneration is accepted in medicine in the case of what are known as 'degenerative diseases', which cause the body to decline such as in the case of Alzheimer's, Multiple Sclerosis and even cancer. T. H. Huxley (known as Darwin's Bulldog) believed that if the world would inevitably cool to the point of freezing then during the cooling period, simpler organisms would adapt and survive rather than humans. Wells attended lectures by Huxley at the Normal School of Science and was greatly influenced by him.
Based on Huxley's ideas of degeneration, Wells showed a future where humans no longer existed but were replaced by simpler and simpler organisms from the humanoid Eloi and the ape-like Morlocks down to blobs that bore no resemblance to man. However, in the case of the Eloi and the Morlocks, Wells wasn't simply showing the degeneration of organisms but was also highlighting what known as 'social Darwinism'. Wells believed that social structures could affect the future of humanity, specifically the class structure.
The Time Traveller posits that the Eloi are the descendants of the Victorian upper classes, those who did not have to work and lived lives of leisure. On the other hand, the Morlocks who dwell underground are viewed as descendants of the lower classes due to the fact that they work with the machines, tend to the Eloi and have adapted to living in darkness. At the time of writing, many working class people were being forced to live in subterranean conditions and deprived of light, and Wells showed that the Morlocks might be the logical result. The names of the two species might provide some further insight into these social ideas. 'Eloi' is the plural of 'Elohim' in OT Hebrew, which means 'lesser gods'. 'Morlock' has far more uncertain origins. It resembles 'mollocks', a word for 'miner' (underground!), and the Scots word for 'rubbish'. It might also come from the 'Morlachs', a group of rural Serbs and Croatians, who were basically regarded as backwards or primitive. It's entirely possible that all of these terms influenced the name, but all of them have negative and low-classed meanings.
Somehow, The Time Machine has managed to maintain popularity and fame in current popular culture and has had a great deal of influence, despite being removed from its original cultural context of over 100 years ago. The key thing about the novel that allowed it to survive up to the present day was its popularity in its own time. The question is, what made The Time Machine so popular so that it could endure? Well, there are plenty of factors that could have contributed to it and we'll never know for sure unless we get a time machine, travel back to 1895 or so and conduct some surveys.
However, some things that we do know is that it dealt with contemporary fears involving evolution, degeneration and the end of the world. It was also far enough in the future that it couldn't easily be dismissed and even today, it is still far enough removed that we can't say that something like that may not arise. At the same time, it provided insight into society of the time, namely in regard to the class system and the over reliance upon certain individuals to provide for society as a whole. Even today, we can relate to that as their are people who work the land, process food and manufacture goods, and if these people vanished, society as a whole would be unable to provide for itself. Think of what happens when a strike occurs and you get the picture. Think about the miners' strikes in the UK (most recently the major one from 1984-85) or even the many recent transport strikes in Ireland. Those in society who benefit from such labour don't take it well when the providers stop providing.
Aside from those factors, Wells also did something that was unusual at the time but which can still interest present readers. Thanks to Huxley's influence, Wells made the effort to make science marketable to the masses in what would now be termed 'pop science'. Rather than using very technical arguments and examples, Wells provided explanations and created scenarios that made science interesting and more accessible to those outside of the scientific community. While some of the science has since been proven inaccurate, much of it is still valid and it provides a reader with engaging material. It also made it easy to adapt to visual media, which helped immortalise it. It should also be noted that it has a cliffhanger of epic proportions, even by today's standards because what on earth happened to the Time Traveller?!
Well, technically Stephen Baxter provided an explanation in the sequel, Time Ships, which was authorised by the Wells estate for the 100th publication anniversary in 1995. It's technically canon and I haven't read it but it sounds totally wild!
So now that I've blathered on for a year and a day, I should get to why this novel is influential. This is what you've all been waiting for kids!
1) Time machines
Not only was Wells the first writer to use a device for time travel but he was also the first to name it (duh, he was the first!) and it happens to have stuck. We are forever indebted to Wells for coining the term 'time machine' and automatically linking every use of it to the original 1895 narrative.
2) Adaptations and inspired narratives
The Time Machine has been turned into a teleplay, a whole host of radio adaptations and broadcasts, films, a CD audio drama (made in 1994 starring Leonard Nimoy), comics and graphic novels, and a whole host of unauthorised sequels.
It has inspired video games and has been paid homage to in episodes of various TV shows including Wishbone and Futurama.
3) Doctor Who
An eccentric scientist uses a machine that can travel through time while accompanied by a more 'primitive' female who dotes on him (soon to be her, woot!), hm... sounds oddly familiar, I wonder why? Golly gosh! Could it possibly be inspired by... The Time Machine.
There's actually a comic strip story that names a man who's implied to be the Time Traveller from Wells's story. Wells himself actually made an appearance in Timelash (broadcast in 1985) where he had an encounter with the Doctor and it was implied that he wrote The Time Machine as a result of the events that he witnesses. Which came first, the Time Traveller or the Doctor? In the real world, that's a pretty easy question to answer.
4) Back to the Future Franchise
An eccentric scientist uses a machine that can travel through time... wait a second, this is some serious déjà vu going on. Okay, we're minus a female companion who doesn't really understand our scientist and he's got the crazy hair that seems to align him with Albert Einstein, but let's face it, it reeks of The Time Machine.
----
Now, I could list many, many different time travel narratives that have popped up over the years and owe a legacy to Wells in one way or another and that's just in regard to The Time Machine. Wells wrote many influential narratives and honestly, he got everywhere like a bad rash. Well... with fewer negative connotations. I could talk about awakening a certain itch in humanity's imagination but I don't think I want to stretch this metaphor, thanks.
On that note, I've said all that I'm going to say about The Time Machine (and good riddance, you say, you imaginary people in my head) but I will blather on about Wells again with more on degeneracy and the bestiality of man when I write all about The Island of Dr Moreau. I can't make any promises about when that'll happen and in the meantime, I may well write about a whole manner of other things because I have been reading many, many books of late and I want to talk about all of them at once so we'll go where my weird brain takes me.
Congratulations if you managed to make it down here because I do talk a lot of strange nonsense. Ciao for now.
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