The Time Machine (game)

''The Time Machine'' is an 1895 dystopian post-apocalyptic science fiction novella by H. G. Wells about a Victorian scientist known as the Time Traveller who travels to the year 802,701. The work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively forward or backward through time. The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now almost universally used to refer to such a vehicle or device.

Utilizing a frame story set in then-present Victorian England, Wells's text focuses on a recount of the otherwise anonymous Time Traveller's journey into the far future. A work of future history and speculative evolution, ''The Time Machine'' is interpreted in modern times as a commentary on the increasing inequality and class divisions of Wells's era, which he projects as giving rise to two separate human species: the fair, childlike Eloi, and the savage, simian Morlocks, distant descendants of the contemporary upper and lower classes respectively. It is believed that Wells's depiction of the Eloi as a race living in plenitude and abandon was inspired by the utopic romance novel ''News from Nowhere'' (1890), though Wells's universe in the novel is notably more savage and brutal.

In his 1931 preface to the book, Wells wrote that ''The Time Machine'' seemed "a very undergraduate performance to its now mature writer, as he looks over it once more", though he states that "the writer feels no remorse for this youthful effort". However, critics have praised the novella's handling of its thematic concerns, with Marina Warner writing that the book was the most significant contribution to understanding before Sigmund Freud's ''The Interpretation of Dreams'', with the novel " onveyinghow close he felt to the melancholy seeker after a door that he once opened on to a luminous vision and could never find again".

''The Time Machine'' has been adapted into two feature films of the same name, as well as two television versions and many comic book adaptations. It has also indirectly inspired many more works of fiction in many media productions.

History

Wells had considered the notion of time travel before, in a short story titled "The Chronic Argonauts" (1888). This work, published in his college newspaper, was the foundation for ''The Time Machine''.

He frequently stated that he had thought of using some of this material in a series of articles in the ''Pall Mall Gazette'', but in response to a request by W. E. Henley, the editor of '' National Observer'', he rewrote "The Chronic Argonauts" into a series of seven loosely connected and fictionalized essays which were anonymously published in the newspaper from 17 March to 23 June 1894. The series was never completed as Henley stepped down from his role as editor in ''National Observer''. With his encouragement, Wells continued to work on the story, and at the end of the year, when Henley was given the position as editor of Heinemann's periodical ''The New Review'', he arranged for the story to be published there in serialized form in the January to May 1895 editions instead, for which Wells was paid £100 (equal to about £ today). Henry Holt and Company published the first book edition (possibly prepared from a different manuscript) on 7 May 1895; Heinemann published a British edition on 29 May. These two editions are different textually and are commonly referred to as the "Holt text" and "Heinemann text", respectively. Nearly all modern reprints reproduce the Heinemann text.

The story reflects Wells's own socialist political views, his view on life and abundance, and the contemporary angst about industrial relations. It is also influenced by Ray Lankester's theories about social degeneration and shares many elements with Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel '' Vril, the Power of the Coming Race'' (1871). It is also thought that Wells's Eloi race shares many features with the works of other English socialists, most notably William Morris and his work ''News from Nowhere'' (1890), in which money is depicted as irrelevant and work is undertaken merely as a form of pleasure. Other science fiction works of the period, including Edward Bellamy's novel '' Looking Backward: 2000–1887'' (1888) and the later film ''Metropolis'' (1927), dealt with similar themes. In his later reassessment of the book, published as the 1931 preface to ''The Time Machine'', Wells wrote that the text has "lasted as long as the diamond-framed safety bicycle, which came in at about the date of its first publication", and is "assured it will outlive him", attesting to the power of the book.

Based on Wells's personal experiences and childhood, the working class literally spent a lot of their time underground. His own family would spend most of their time in a dark basement kitchen when not being occupied in their father's shop. Later, his own mother would work as a housekeeper in a house with tunnels below, where the staff and servants lived in underground quarters. A medical journal published in 1905 would focus on these living quarters for servants in poorly ventilated dark basements. In his early teens, Wells became a draper's apprentice, having to work in a basement for hours on end.

This work is an early example of the Dying Earth subgenre. The portion of the novella that sees the Time Traveller in a distant future where the sun is huge and red also places ''The Time Machine'' within the realm of eschatology; that is, the study of the end times, the end of the world, and the ultimate destiny of humankind.

Holt, Rinehart & Winston re-published the book in 2000, paired with ''The War of the Worlds'', and commissioned Michael Koelsch to illustrate a new cover art.

Plot

A Victorian Englishman, identified only as the ''Time Traveller'', tells his weekly dinner guests that he has experimental verification of a machine that can travel through time. He shows them what he says is a small model, and they watch it disappear. He says he has a big machine nearly finished in his laboratory, in which a person could travel through time. At dinner the following week, a weary, bedraggled Traveller recounts to his guests what he experienced on his journey to the future.

In the new narrative, the Time Traveller goes into the future, observing things moving in quick motion around him. He sees his house disappear and turn into a lush garden. The Traveller stops in A.D. 802,701, and meets the Eloi, a society of small, childlike humanoids. They live in small communities within large and futuristic yet deteriorating buildings, and adhere to a fruit-based diet. His efforts to communicate with them are hampered by their lack of curiosity or discipline. They appear happy and carefree but fear the dark, particularly moonless nights. They give no response to nocturnal disappearances, possibly because they are so afraid of them. After exploring the area around the Eloi's residences, the Traveller reaches the top of a hill overlooking what was once London and finds the ruins of what once was a metropolis. He concludes that the entire planet became a garden, with little trace of human society or engineering from the hundreds of thousands of years prior, and that communism has at last been achieved. He also theorizes that intelligence springs from necessity; with no real challenges facing the Eloi, they have lost the spirit, intelligence, and physical fitness of humanity at its peak.

Returning to the site where he arrived, the Traveller finds his machine missing; he is confident that it at least has not traveled through time, as he had removed its levers. Later, he encounters the Morlocks, ape-like troglodytes who live in darkness underground and surface only at night. Deducing that they must have taken his time machine, he explores one of many "wells" that lead to the Morlocks' dwellings and discovers them operating the machinery and industry that makes the above-ground paradise of the Eloi possible. He realizes that the Morlocks control and feed upon the Eloi. The Traveller speculates that the human race has diverged into two species: the favored aristocracy has become the Eloi, and their mechanical servants have become the Morlocks.

Meanwhile, he rescues Eloi Weena from drowning, as none of the other Eloi take any notice of her plight. The Traveller takes Weena with him on an expedition to "The Palace of Green Porcelain", a distant structure which turns out to be a derelict museum. Here, the Traveller finds fresh matches and fashions a crude weapon against Morlocks, whom he must fight to recover his machine. He plans to take Weena back to his own time to save her from the horrors of the future world. Because the tiring journey back to Weena's home is too much for them, they stop in the forest for the night. They are eventually attacked by Morlocks, and Weena faints. The Traveller escapes when a small fire he left behind them to repel the Morlocks turns into a forest fire; Weena and the Morlocks are lost in the blaze.

The Morlocks open the Sphinx and use the machine as bait to capture the distraught Traveller, not understanding that he can use it to escape. He reattaches the levers before travelling further ahead to roughly 30 million years from his own time. There, he sees some of the last living things on a dying Earth: crab-like creatures wandering blood-red beaches chasing enormous butterflies, in a world covered in lichenoid vegetation. He continues to make jumps forward through time, seeing Earth's rotation cease and the sun grow larger, redder, and dimmer, and the world falling silent and freezing as the last living things die out.

Overwhelmed, he returns to his own time, arriving at the laboratory just three hours after he originally left. He arrives late to his own dinner party, whereupon, after eating, the Traveller relates his adventures to his disbelieving visitors, producing as evidence two unusual white flowers Weena put in his pocket.

The original narrator relates that he returned to the Traveller's house the next day, finding him preparing for another journey and promising to return in a short time. After waiting for three years, however, the narrator says that the Traveller has not returned.

Deleted text

A section from the thirteenth chapter of the serial published in ''New Review'' (May 1895, partway down p. 577 to p. 580, line 29) does not appear in either of the 1895 editions of the book. It was drafted at the suggestion of Wells's editor, William Ernest Henley, who wanted Wells to "oblige your editor" by lengthening the text with, among other things, an illustration of "the ultimate degeneracy" of humanity. "There was a slight struggle," Wells later recalled, "between the writer and W. E. Henley who wanted, he said, to put a little 'writing' into the tale. But the writer was in reaction from that sort of thing, the Henley interpolations were cut out again, and he had his own way with his text." This portion of the story was published elsewhere as " The Final Men" (1940) and " The Grey Man". The deleted text was also published by Forrest J Ackerman in an issue of the American edition of ''Perry Rhodan''.

The deleted text recounts an incident immediately after the Traveller's escape from the Morlocks. He finds himself in the distant future in a frost-covered moorland with simple grasses and black bushes, populated with furry, hopping herbivores resembling kangaroos. He stuns or kills one with a rock, and upon closer examination realises they are probably the descendants of humans / Eloi / Morlocks. A gigantic, centipede-like arthropod approaches and the Traveller flees into the next day, finding that the creature has apparently eaten the tiny humanoid. The Dover Press and Easton Press editions of the novella restore this deleted segment.

Scholarship

Significant scholarly commentary on ''The Time Machine'' began from the early 1960s, initially contained in various broad studies of Wells's early novels (such as Bernard Bergonzi's ''The Early H.G. Wells: A Study of the Scientific Romances'') and studies of utopias/dystopias in science fiction (such as Mark R. Hillegas's ''The Future as Nightmare: H.G. Wells and the Anti-Utopians''). Much critical and textual work was done in the 1970s, including the tracing of the very complex publication history of the text, its drafts, and unpublished fragments.

Academic publications

A further resurgence in scholarship came around the time of the novella's centenary in 1995, and a major outcome of this was the 1995 conference and substantial anthology of academic papers, which was collected in print as ''H.G. Wells's Perennial Time Machine''. This publication then allowed the development of a guide-book for academic study at Master's and Ph.D. level: ''H.G. Wells's The Time Machine: A Reference Guide''.

The scholarly journal ''The Wellsian'' has published around twenty articles on ''The Time Machine'', and a U.S. academic journal ''The Undying Fire'', devoted to H.G. Wells studies, has published three articles since its inception in 2002.

Subtext of the names ''Eloi'' and ''Morlock''

According to Leon Stover in his book ''The Time Machine: An invention name'', the name ''Eloi'' is the Hebrew plural for Elohim, or lesser gods, in the Old Testament. However, this derivation is unlikely as the word 'Elohim' is already in the plural, with the singular being 'eloah'.

Wells's source for the name ''Morlock'' is less clear. It may refer to the Canaanite god Moloch associated with child sacrifice. The name Morlock may also be a play on ' – what miners might call themselves – or a Scots word for rubbish, or a reference to the Morlacchi community in Dalmatia.

Symbols

''The Time Machine'' can be read as a symbolic novel. The time machine itself can be viewed as a symbol, and there are several symbols in the narrative, including the Sphinx, flowers, and fire.

* The statue of the Sphinx is the place where the Morlocks hide the time machine and references the Sphinx in the story of Oedipus who gives a riddle that he must first solve before he can pass. The Sphinx appeared on the cover of the first London edition as requested by Wells and would have been familiar to his readers.
* The white flowers can symbolize Weena's devotion and innocence and contrast with the machinery of the time machine. They are the only proof that the Time Traveller's story is true.
* Fire symbolizes civilization: the Time Traveller uses it to ward off the Morlocks, but it escapes his control and turns into a forest fire.

Adaptations

Radio and audio

''Escape'' radio broadcasts

The CBS radio anthology ''Escape'' adapted ''The Time Machine'' twice, in 1948 starring Jeff Corey, and again in 1950 starring Lawrence Dobkin as the traveller. A script adapted by Irving Ravetch was used in both episodes. The Time Traveller was named Dudley and was accompanied by his skeptical friend Fowler as they travelled to the year 100,080.

1994 Alien Voices audio drama

In 1994, an audio drama was released on cassette and CD by Alien Voices, starring Leonard Nimoy as the Time Traveller (named John in this adaptation) and John de Lancie as David Filby. John de Lancie's children, Owen de Lancie and Keegan de Lancie, played the parts of the Eloi. The drama is approximately two hours long and is more faithful to the story than several of the film adaptations. Some changes are made to reflect modern language and knowledge of science.

7th Voyage

In 2000, Alan Young read ''The Time Machine'' for 7th Voyage Productions, Inc., in 2016 to celebrate the 120th Anniversary of H.G. Wells's novella.

2009 BBC Radio 3 broadcast

Robert Glenister starred as the Time Traveller, with William Gaunt as H. G. Wells

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