The Time Machine (Enriched Classics)

This is a great read. This is also HG Wells trying to convince us that free markets are bad.

Wells fails to convince me that the world will someday devolve to a world where there is a gushy upper class that sits around and eats delicious fruit all day, while an underclass works to provide the fruit. Did I mention the underclass eats the gushy folk up top?

Honestly, if you had the ability to eat your competing race, with no retaliation, one of the races would get the picture and make the other go extinct.

Despite all the socialist leanings, fallacies and errors in Wells' judgment, I really love this book! Let's be honest for a minute, this is top-notch story-telling at its best! How much creativity does it take to invent a new genre (science fiction) like Wells did? That takes some awesome right there.

The price for the book is also right! This thing is cheap! Not even cheap, used and dirty! Just cheap! I think everyone should read this book for fun, not for political insight, but fun.

It is also really short. Quick reads are good stuff.

I urge you to try it out, all you can lose is 5.95 and a few hours of your life.

Hoffer once said that great books generally have a great sentence or two. Obviously, he (and I) has an extraordinarily high standard for what is a good sentence. There are few standards that surpass the rigor for demarcating classic literature; we all remember that, almost transcendental, line from each of the true classic works, which touch us on rational and aesthetic levels. "The Time Machine" is exemplar of the great-sentences standard for classic literature. From a purely pleasure-reading standpoint, there are few books that I can name that are so packed with the modes of excitation that make, more broadly speaking, a great book great; I can, maybe, proffer two on the same level, Voltaire's "Candide" and Boethius' "The Consolation of Philosophy." "The Time Machine" is a breed of book that captures the imagination, making you linger on every page. Personally, I could not help but reread virtually every page, before going on.

As an advocate of science in literature (and I mean science in literature, not necessarily, strictly speaking, the more fantastical science-fiction), I think this book has much to offer the imagination. In one of the most original bits of science-laden dialogue I have ever encountered in literature, the Time Traveller offers the notion of the "instantaneous cube," which sends the reader's mind into a whirl of wonderment and amazement. (For those interested, see my blog, entitled "The Time Traveller's Instantaneous Cube": milliern_dot_wordpress_dot_com) The dialogue, itself, is as phenomenal as the actual idea presented. It is a real treat, to say the least.

I must also mention that this books storyline has some really fantastic feature that most literary critiques would be interested in: it synthesizes an endless plenum of ideas, ranging from utopian, sociological, and human psychological elements, just to name a few. Additionally, the theme of man-as-wonderer, a veritable element of the human condition, as found in the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Wanderer," Shelley's "Frankenstein," and Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe," is very much a central thread of this work.

There is so much that one can say, so all I will add is the imperative: Read it; even if you know the storyline, as I did, you will enjoy it.

Review of the Edition (Pocket Books 2004): This edition is not exhaustive in its notes and introduction, but it is definitely a good one, especially, if you are not looking for a deep plumbing of the material. The introduction does it justice, and the notes are on queue with things that I was wondering, as I went through the book. All in all, if you aren't reading this edition for some college book report, or, if you are, you have some external sources to work with, I recommend this book. The print is clear, and the book fit into the side pocket of my cargo pants, so it was nicely portable on bus rides.

I did not like The Time Machine. I thought that it was sort of boring and I could barely keep reading it. The actual machine itself was ok but I did not like the diologue that H.G. Wells put into the book.

When it got to the part where he first goes to the future I almost went to sleep right away. I was very bored and I almost picked up another book.

Anyways the book is about a man that goes to the future and meets up with these small people that eat fruit all day. Then he meets the mongrels that eat the small people. Which I think is sort of stupid.

In the book H.G. Wells doesn't, I think, portray the time traveler as he should be portrayed. I think it would also be nice if could have given everybody names instead of calling them their profession.

Over all I give this book a 2 out of 5.

A+

Many science fiction fans will agree that the construction of a time machine is a possibility which is not so far fetched from our own reality. In theory everything is possible for science fiction is like a bridge between the realities of fiction and non fiction. The Time Machine was a brilliant story, subversive of the creation of the social class. Wells proved here that he was an exponent of social justice and an adherent of fairness and equality. As a reader I can only identify with the pain of the Eloi, as even today the world is divided to predators and prey. The book was much different than the film, but it still has the edge of originality. I really enjoyed the twilight zone whence quantum physics and philosophy merged. It was a powerful read.

travel 800,000+ yrs in to the future and back.

This book is the story of a nineteen century time traveler who travels some 800,000 odd yrs into the future and contrary to his expectations of a progressive civilization he notices one in its decadency, i.e. in the "twilight of humanity". Humanity, he notices, has evolved into two distinct races; one that lives an idyllic, vegetarian, carefree life and appeared to him as unintelligent and androgynous (evolved from the aristocratic class of his times), and a subterranean race that preys on the former (evolved from the working class). In some sense, what the time traveler notices is already here; you can see it coming to play in certain prosperous regions of the world with decadency setting in; or, perhaps, the morlocks are going to be the machines that increasingly control our lives, (the GPS in our car and the like) without which we are starting to lose our bearings even in our own neighborhood. The copy I have is the Simon and Schuster one which has certain helpful notes and interpretations towards the end.