The Time Machine

The late 19th century literary style is rough to read. Luckily for me, I had a recently read, The Adventures of Barron Trump from the same era. I recognized the style and this book was a comparative masterpiece. The rest of the club was less forgiving. As far as the text. The whole time I was thinking he would have a realization about the Morlocks comparable to the one he had about the Eloi. Some sort of plot twist that would show he had misread the situation. It never came and I felt disappointed. It would have been more significant if he brought preconceptions about society with him across time and they were all wrong. The book club discussion led into how AI was going to become Morlock and humanity would be Eloi in 100 years. That is in many ways the best case scenario. AI does all the work for humanity and people become feeble minded pets incapable of doing anything for ourselves.

I like a good time travel story every now and then and was very curious what a 130yr old story of a time traveler would be like. Initially, I was kind of surprised that I had never read this story before. I’ve known about it and heard about it for decades but never read it.

It’s not long, a few chapters, that the story is starting to seem familiar to me. I disregard it as just my memory of hearing so much about the story over the years. By about the 30-35% mark, I’m pretty sure I’ve read the story before, but I can’t remember how it ends. Of all the things I do remember about the books I’ve read; it’s the characters and the ending. By the halfway point, I’m absolutely certain I’ve read the book before and the reason I don’t remember the ending is most likely because I DNFed the book at some point.

Well, I finished it this time. My overall opinion of the story? Meh, it’s ok, however, as a time travel story, it’s not that good. There are so many others on the market that are so much better. Hence, my 2star review.

I was expecting a different plot, but it did reassured me of all those fears I think everybody has concerning time traveling and darkness. That fear for the unknown and the unexpected. It got me at that.

I ended up enjoying this book a little more than I initially thought I would. When I first started it, I felt that it was a bit hard to read and slow, mainly due to the way Wells wrote. But as I progressed through the book, it became a little easier, and I think I just got used to the writing style. I will say that the farther you get into the book, the more interesting it becomes. I did enjoy reading about the Time Traveller’s journey in 802,701, and was a little heartbroken about Weena. It was extremely interesting to see a spin on what the future of Earth could look like.

I would recommend this to any serious sci-fi reader with an interest in how the genre came to be. This book set a lot of standards for future writers and though dated and flawed in a number of significant ways, there are few time travel stories that match it for its farsightedness and audacity.