The Time Machine [Paperback]

The first great novel to imagine time travel, H. G. Wells’sThe Time Machine(1895) follows its narrator on an incredible journey that takes him eventually to the earth’s last moments. When a Victorian scientist invents a machine that allows him to travel to the year A.D. 802,701, he encounters a highly evolved society of people called Eloi, for whom suffering has apparently been replaced by refinement and harmony. First impressions are misleading, however, and his discovery of the Eloi’s true relationship to the brutish Morlocks who lurk in tunnels beneath them leads him to a horrifying insight into the fate of mankind and its roots in his own time.“[Wells] contrives to give over humanity into the clutches of the Impossible and yet manages to keep it down (or up) to its humanity, to its flesh, blood, sorrow, folly.” —Joseph Conrad

H. G. Wells (1866-1946) was a prominent English socialist and pacifist, and a prolific writer in many genres. As the author ofThe War of the Worlds,The Invisible Man,The Island of Dr. Moreau, andThe Time Machine, he is considered a pioneer of science fiction.

Chapter 1
 
The time traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought runs gracefully free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way – marking the points with a lean forefinger – as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) and his fecundity.
 
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