The Time Machine

After my arduous experience of The Mysteries of Udolpho, and being wearied of its archaic and crying heroine, I naturally had to recover for an afternoon. It wasn’t long, however, before I reached for the shortest book I could find on my reading list, which also happens to be the most futuristic. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells is a tiny little thing – a mere 118 pages (at least, it is in my rather 1980s-style copy), following a basic story-within-a-story layout, in which the Victorians so delighted.

A discerning and pleasant young man narrates the frame of the story – we never find out his name or occupation, but we do know that every Thursday, he and a group of other men assemble for dinner and a masculine chat at the mysterious “Time Traveller’s” house. The Time Traveller begins by explaining his innovative theories on time – something at which I initially inwardly groaned, thinking I was going to drown in lengthy explanations, but really, it’s all fairly straightforward. I was going to paraphrase these ideas, but on second thoughts, decided against this - it would almost certainly put you off. Nevertheless, after this theoretical discussion, the men reconvene a week later, to find that the Time Traveller arrives an hour late to his own dinner party, bleeding, limping, haggard, exhausted and hungry. He washes, dresses, ravenously devours a plate of mutton, and then relates to his astonished friends a remarkable tale, that is to take up the next twelve chapters. He claims he has travelled forwards in time, to the year 802701 AD, where humanity has evolved (or degenerated – a popular theme with the more depressed Victorian writers) into a small, joyful, and idle race.

Without wanting to give too much away, what initially seems to be a paradise - “the Golden Age” - becomes increasingly sinister. Although it appears that amongst this new and beautiful race, there is no disease, crime or pain, it soon becomes evident that evolution has split, and branched into two strains of humankind – those who live in peace on the earth’s surface, and those who skulk and creep in the depths of the earth.

I am immediately tempted to say that I loved this novel – or novella, rather, as it really is extremely short. However, a closer inspection of my thoughts reveals a more indistinct opinion. You see, there’s not really that much in it to love. It is, in a way, a twisted version of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, and I’ve no doubt that Wells drew inspiration from this Renaissance oeuvre. In a way similar to More, Wells presents the occurrences of this fictional alternate world as all too real. However, whereas it could be argued that More advocates the Utopians’ way of life (to a certain extent – but I won’t go into the long and boring explanation), Wells seems sickened to the very core by his bleak image of mankind’s future. He seems frightened of the direction humanity is going, both in this adventures in 802701 A.D. and when he goes even further into the future. In what was, for me, the most powerful passage in the novella, the Time Traveller narrates the earth’s death, millions and millions of years in the future, when there is barely any life on earth, and the huge, red, dying sun is obscured by blackness. It is a chilling image, and Wells’ writing seems to me to be particularly effective through the colloquial yet matter-of-fact way it is presented. It is utterly enthralling.

Well! There we have it. A short review for a short book. What interests me is whether Wells wants us to believe the Time Traveller is telling the truth or not. I’ve always been a bit of a fan of the unreliable narrator (and if you are too, two contemporary novels that spring to mind are try Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, and the slightly more recent The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters). The knowledge that the ‘truth’ might not be strictly truthful can change your opinion of a novel in an instant, and ensure that you never read it the same way twice. The Time Traveller himself admits of his story that “most of it will sound like lying.” Indeed, several of the men witnessing his story don’t believe him at all. The young man who narrates the beginning and end of the book, however, seems decided it is true. Ambiguity, it would seem, is the order of the day. Choose what you will – either way, the novel itself is a bleak testimony to Wells’ sad and rather haunting vision of humanity.