The Time Machine'So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers...' At a Victorian dinner party, in Richmond, London, the Time Traveller returns to tell his extraordinary tale of mankind's future in the year 802,701 AD. It is a dystopian vision of Darwinian evolution, with humans split into an above-ground species of Eloi, and their troglodyte brothers. The first book H. G. Wells published, The Time Machine is a scientific romance that helped invent the genre of science fiction and the time travel story. Even before its serialisation had finished in the spring of 1895, Wells had been declared 'a man of genius', and the book heralded a fifty year career of a major cultural and political controversialist. It is a sardonic rejection of Victorian ideals of progress and improvement and a detailed satirical commentary on the Decadent culture of the 1890s. This edition features a contextual introduction, detailed explanatory notes, and two essays Wells wrote just prior to the publication of his first book. |
Contents
Introduction | 7 |
The Machine | 12 |
The Time Traveller Returns | 16 |
Time Travelling | 21 |
In The Golden Age | 26 |
The Sunset of Mankind | 30 |
A Sudden Shock | 35 |
Explanation | 40 |
After The Story | 83 |
Epilogue | 87 |
The New Review The Further Vision | 89 |
HG Wells Zoological Retrogression 1891 | 92 |
H G Wells On Extinction 1893 | 100 |
Explanatory Notes | 103 |
OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS | 120 |
OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS | 121 |
The Morlocks | 50 |
When The Night Came | 55 |
The Palace of Green Porcelain | 61 |
In The Darkness | 67 |
The Trap of the White Sphinx | 73 |
The Further Vision | 76 |
The Time Travellers Return | 81 |
OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS | 122 |
OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS | 123 |
OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS | 124 |
OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS | 125 |
OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS | 126 |
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