There’s nothing that will convince me to read a book quite like the impending threat of a movie being released that is based on that book. The movie trailers I have seen at the theatre lately, advertising the imminent release of The Time Machine piqued my curiosity about this book. I managed to convince my boyfriend that it would likely be an interesting read, and it would be best read before seeing the movie, since it is inevitable that we will be going to see the movie shortly after it’s release. So during a visit to the bookstore last night, he bought a copy and I managed to persuade him to let me borrow it, and I promised to return it to him the next day (which incidentally happens to be today).

I am used to reading fantasy books – most of which are extremely long and drawn out epics. Most of the time, I like that sort of thing, but recently I have found myself needing a break. I have strayed from my reading a bit and felt that The Time Machine would be a good chance to do a bit of quick reading. Its shortness is what drew me to it; at a measly 138 pages, I knew it would be a quick read. And it was. I am a slow reader, I tend to linger on certain words and phrases, making sure I get the full meaning from them. The Time Machine drew me in at the beginning and didn’t let go until I had finished it, just two or three hours later.


So What’s It About?

As far as I am aware, H.G. Wells was the first person to come up with the idea of a Time Machine, a machine used to travel through time, forwards or backwards. And if that is true, then he has had a tremendous impact on storytelling since the late 1800’s when this story was originally published.

Wells tells the story of an unnamed man, known only as the Time Traveler. The book starts with the Time Traveler telling a group of acquaintances about a fourth dimension, which he says is Time. Time, he says, is actually a dimension in space, like length and height, and our consciousnesses simply travel along that dimension at a steady velocity throughout our lives. Since Time is really a dimension in space, then it is possible to travel along it, both forwards and backwards. He tries to prove it to his friends with a model of a time machine, a small object that he places on a table. Once he has everyone’s attention, he pushes a lever and the model disappears. He explains this by saying that it has traveled either forward or backward into time so they can no longer see it. Most of his friends are quite skeptical and go home, believing their friend has played a trick on them.

The next week, some acquaintances of the Time Traveler are at his house again, and this time there is no sign of the Time Traveler, but only a note informing them to start supper without him if he hasn’t arrived by seven o’clock. He eventually arrives at close to eight o’clock, extremely disheveled and acting quite strangely. He insists that he must clean up and eat before he can tell his tale. His friends wait patiently until he finished, and then they all gather in the den to hear his tale.

The Time Traveler tells his friends that he had traveled forward in time to the year 802, 701 A.D. What he found there was not quite what he had expected to find. Without giving away the story to those of you who haven’t read the book, I will tell you that this story explores human social structure as well as human evolution. I will not tell you what he finds there – if you really want to know, read the book!


My Thoughts

This was a really fun book to read. Despite being written over a hundred years ago, it is certainly thought provoking, and it is obvious that many stories told since then have drawn heavily upon its influence.

Wells was extremely brave in trying to predict what the future would be like in more than 800,000 years into the future, but he was also smart. In many older books (and movies), the authors try to predict the near future. But by trying to predict what the future will be like in only 50 or 100 years, it stands to reason that the book will be up for scrutiny once that time arrives. We have all seen older movies or read older books that tried to predict what the year 2000 would be like, and we know that almost all of them failed miserably, showing such technological advances as flying cars, etc. Wells avoided this problem by having his Time Traveler go into the unforeseeable future, one so far out of reach that even if the human race did happen to survive for that long, chances are that all copies of his book would have disintegrated into dust by that time.

Many writers try to imagine what the human race will be doing in a few hundred, or even a few thousand years. They often try to show us what it would be like if we were able to conquer our environment, and understood everything to the point where we could control it. H. G. Wells goes beyond that, he ponders what it would be like after the human race has supposedly succeeded at everything and has succumbed to laziness. And that’s what makes this such a good story. Even before time travel was made the topic of popular interest with science fiction writers, Wells went beyond what many of them even now will dare to do.

Of course, since this was written so long ago, there are some inconsistencies with modern science, but at the same time it is still quite accurate. The humans the Time Traveler finds in the year 802, 701, are considerably changed from their present form. Unless there were extreme environmental pressures to cause them to change so much in such a short time, so much evolutionary change would not usually happen so quickly. And though I am no geologist, I am not quite sure that the fate of the earth would be as it is described in the book. And while traveling through time, the Time Traveler could see the environment changing around him, and in 800,000 years, there was no mention of an ice age. There is also another inconsistency – at one point he says he was traveling forwards at a rate of one year for every minute that he spent in the Time Machine. Do the math – it would take him quite some time to make it to the year 802,701 at that rate!

This book is appropriate for readers of all ages, and I would particularly suggest it to kids in their pre-teens or early teens. With that said, I would also suggest this book to any adults who may have an interest in the subject matter.


PS A special thank-you to Telynor: I stole your words for the title, without even asking ;)


~~~Thanks for reading!~~~



Recommended: Yes