Recently, I decided to dig up an old read of mine, “The Time Machine”, by H.G. Wells. The title pretty much spells the situation. In it the protagonist, named simply the Time Traveler, creates a wondrous device that can manipulate the very fabric of time, at least in correlation to the position of the machine, and travel either forwards or backwards along the timeline. It is a wonderful piece of fiction and a true marvel to the testament of the great science fiction writing that came out of the dawn of that early Sci-Fi era.
After reading this work, I have the itch to go and watch the original 1960 movie adaptation and the 2002 and see how much of H.G. Wells is left inside those movies put on the big screen. But, what really surprises me(and this may surprise you as well) is the date H.G. Wells published the Time Machine. The piece was published before the turn of the 20th century in 1895. A generational step away from the Civil War and a time right before the dawn of some of the greatest achievements in American History(and worst...).
A time that was eager for change but at the same time apprehensive at notions outside the normal. A time where he would still be ridiculed for his work, H.G. Wells plowed ahead head-long and without a pause. He crafted these pieces with zealous abandon as he churned out great pieces of English Literature one after the other. But, this isn’t an article about all his great works but rather just that of the Time Machine.
As I read the work, I took certain liberties in understanding that we have butchered the written language in the last hundred years or so. This is the problem a reader notices when looking at the exposition of earlier works from a time when the scholar did the written word in elaborate and grandeur style. A time when writing with as many words that would require a full grasp of the English language from the reader was not just a given but taken as granted. Needless to say, I always battle through a good, old read with a hand on the dictionary and the knowledge that I will probably learn a word I have never heard spoken in today’s society.
Exert from the Time Machine:
“It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity upon the wane. The ruddy sunset set me thinking of the sunset of mankind. For the first time I began to realize an odd consequence of the social effort in which we are at present engaged. And yet, come to think, it is a logical consequence enough. Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions of life – the true civilizing process that makes life more and more secure – had gone steadily on to a climax. One triumph of a united humanity over Nature had followed another….The whole world will be intelligent, educated, and co-operating; things will move faster and faster towards the subjugation of Nature. In the end, wisely and carefully we shall readjust the balance of animal and vegetable life to suit our human needs.”
The book itself is a simplistic plot in today’s thought processes and isn’t a remarkable over-the-top storyline. To read it would be to wrap oneself up in traditional, age-old tropes that we understand and some would consider mundane. Again, you have to take certain liberties. H.G. Wells paved the way for some of those old tropes. He was a founder of these notions. Other works of that time that considered time travel would have been like Mark Twain’s, “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”, which came out just a mere six years prior in printed work. When placing a timeline on H.G. Wells, a fore-father of science fiction, one has to remember that he rubbed shoulders with that literary giant. And, he did it quite well.
In the Time Machine, H.G. Wells tackled scientific concepts in an era where many would consider his work blasphemy. An age where news and technologic concepts traveled by telegraph and word-of-mouth. Change was coming but the process was much slower than what we see today with the ability of the internet and inner-connecting theories we can explore with just a fingertip. In those dawning days of modern technology, I wonder to myself how many nights did H.G. Wells curl up to theories like that of Charles Darwin’s on natural selection. Or look to the stars and wonder what was out there? To implore the thoughts of where we were going and how we would get there. The theory of Natural Selection was all H.G. Wells needed to work out in his head when he wrote about a world in the distant future of where man had diverged. A world where human evolution had taken different paths; the subterranean man versus the lackadaisical man above ground. It is easy to see how he hooked the readers in that era and for years to come on just that simple premise alone.
H.G. Wells weaved together a fantastic world in which time-travel was possible and humans had evolved. Minds were blown. I can only imagine a little boy by the name of Isaac Asimov that would one day pick up this book and explore the inner-writings and begin to imagine worlds of his own. H.G. Wells set up the foundation(pun intended) for future generations of Sci-Fi writers and blazed the trail for them much like Jules Verne and Mary Shelley did for him.
I implore many of the genre to take that trip down memory lane. To pickup the Time Machine and read it earnestly with an open-mind. To explore the world he fabricated. To say that H.G. Wells was ahead of his time in terms of writing just doesn’t sit well with me. If one is to look back, I think he wrote that piece at just the right time. A time that if it had came later, or if he had decided that it was not good enough, would have altered the very fabric of reality we live and breathe in today. In this, H.G. Wells is very much the Time Traveler from the book he wrote. A writer that did truly invent a way into the future. A future where without him, we would not have today.
