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The Time Machine might be considered the first work of modern science-fiction,and it is still the classic statement of an important subgenre.
But this novel about the Victorian future is more than a fantastical yarn. It raises chilling questions about progress, social orders, so called civilisation and the ultimate fate of the world.
Wells wrote this novel mainly because Charles Darwin published and proved his theory of evolution, which was the greatest scientific rumpus since the trial of Galileo.
Wells sees the evolution of two races as an outgrowth of nineteenth-century populations of capitalist predators.
The Time Machine is not a thriller or adventure story,but a fictionalization of Wells's social concerns.
The two important characters are The Time Traveller,an old but lively grey-eyed man,very learned and whise,and The Narator,one of the guests of the Time Traveller who believes his story of the future.
There are furthermore The Eloi and the Morlocks, the two species that resulted from the evolution of man.
The Eloi live on the earth,while the Morlocks,gruesom creatures with no skin colour live under the earth where they have their machines,the result of the technical progress.They produce all the things the Eloi need,and the Eloi are just their livestock.
The Eloi are on the one hand beautiful childrenlike creations and live peacefully together,but on the other hand they have lost all intelligence and intellect.
The Time traveler meets in his house journalists and scientists and presents his new invention,the time machine.He explains how time-travelling should be possible:Time,he says, is a dimension like length,width and height, and refering to the fact that the man learned to fly there was no real reason why it should not be possible to travel along this fourth dimension.He demonstrates this at the example of a miniature time-machine and tells his guests that he intended to travel with his big time-machine.
A week later they should meet again and in the meantime the Time Traveller has travelled into the future.
He tells his guests about his adventure,about the Eloi,the fight with the animal-like Morlocks,and how he could escape,because the Morlocks had taken away his time-machine.
The narator is the only person who believes the Time Traveller,because he shows him a flower from the future and because he sees the time machine disappearing with the Time Traveller who decides to go on a second trip into the future,but he has not returned yet.
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