The Time Machine

The Time Machine is a post-apocalyptic

science fiction novella by H. G. Wells,
published in 1895. 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.[1]
 The Time Machine

Title page

Author H. G. Wells

Cover artist Ben Hardy

Country United Kingdom

Language English

Genre Science fiction

Publisher William Heinemann
(UK)
Henry Holt (US)

Publication date 1895

Pages 84

Text The Time Machine at

Wikisource

Utilizing a frame story set in then-present

Victorian England, Wells' 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, Time Machine is interpreted in
modern times as a commentary on the
increasing inequality and class divisions of
Wells' 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.[2][3] It is believed that Wells'
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' universe in the novel
is notably more savage and brutal.[4]

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 fragments of desire before
Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of
Dreams, with the novel "[conveying] how
close he felt to the melancholy seeker
after a door that he once opened on to a
luminous vision and could never find
again".[5]
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.

Wells frequently stated that he had

thought of using some of this material in a
series of articles in the Pall Mall Gazette
until the publisher asked him if he could
instead write a serial novel on the same
theme. Wells readily agreed and was paid
£100 (equal to about £12,000 today) on its
publication by Heinemann in 1895, which
first published the story in serial form in
the January to May editions of The New
Review (newly under the nominal
editorship of W. E. Henley).[6] Henry Holt
and Company published the first book
edition (possibly prepared from a different
manuscript)[7] on 7 May 1895; Heinemann
published an English edition on 29 May.[6]
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.[8]

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[9] and shares
many elements with Edward Bulwer-
Lytton's novel Vril, the Power of the Coming
Race (1871).[10] It is also thought that
Wells' 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 merely
undertaken as a form of pleasure.[4] 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 seemed to him "a very undergraduate
performance to its now mature writer, as
he looks over it once more", though he
also claims that "the writer feels no
remorse for this youthful effort". His
preface also notes 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.[5]

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.[11] Later,
his own mother would work as a
housekeeper in a house with tunnels
below,[12] where the staff and servants
lived in underground quarters.[13] A
medical journal published in 1905 would
focus on these living quarters for servants
in poorly ventilated dark basements.[14] 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.[15]

Plot

The Time Machine was reprinted in Two Complete Science-Adventure Books in 1951
The book's protagonist is a Victorian
English scientist and gentleman inventor
living in Richmond, Surrey, identified by a
narrator simply as the Time Traveller.
Similarly, with but one exception (a man
named Filby), none of the dinner guests
present are ever identified by name, but
rather by profession (for example, "the
Psychologist") or physical description (for
example, "the Very Young Man").

The narrator recounts the Traveller's

lecture to his weekly dinner guests that
time is simply a fourth dimension and
demonstrates a tabletop model machine
for travelling through the fourth
dimension. He reveals that he has built a
machine capable of carrying a person
through time, and he returns at dinner the
following week to recount a remarkable
tale, becoming the new narrator.

In the new narrative, the Time Traveller

tests his device. At first he thinks nothing
has happened but soon finds out he went
five hours into the future. He continues
forward and sees his house disappear and
turn into a lush garden. The Time Traveller
stops in A.D. 802,701, where he meets the
Eloi, a society of small, elegant, childlike
adults. They live in small communities
within large and futuristic yet slowly
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, and particularly moonless nights.
Observing them, he finds that they give no
response to mysterious nocturnal
disappearances, possibly because the
thought of it alone frightens them into
silence. After exploring the area around
the Eloi's residences, the Time Traveller
reaches the top of a hill overlooking
London. He concludes that the entire
planet has become a garden, with little
trace of human society or engineering
from the hundreds of thousands of years
prior, and that communism[16] has at last
been achieved.

Returning to the site where he arrived, the

Time Traveller is shocked to find his time
machine missing and eventually
concludes that it has been dragged by
some unknown party into a nearby
structure with heavy doors, locked from
the inside, which resembles a Sphinx.
Luckily, he had removed the machine's
levers before leaving it (the time machine
being unable to travel through time without
them). Later in the dark, he is approached
menacingly by the Morlocks, ape-like
troglodytes who live in darkness
underground and surface only at night.
Exploring one of many "wells" that lead to
the Morlocks' dwellings, he discovers the
machinery and industry that makes the
above-ground paradise of the Eloi
possible. He alters his theory, speculating
that the human race has evolved into two
species: the favoured aristocracy has
become the intellectually degraded Eloi,
and their mechanical servants have
become the brutal light-fearing Morlocks.

Deducing that the Morlocks have taken his

time machine, he explores the Morlock
tunnels, learning that due to a lack of any
other means of sustenance, they feed on
the Eloi. The Time Traveller theorizes that
intelligence is the result of and response
to danger; with no real challenges facing
the Eloi, they have lost the spirit,
intelligence, and physical fitness of
humanity at its peak.

Meanwhile, he saves an Eloi named Weena

from drowning as none of the other Eloi
take any notice of her plight, and they
develop an innocently affectionate
relationship over the course of several
days. He takes Weena with him on an
expedition to a distant structure dubbed
"The Palace of Green Porcelain", which
turns out to be a derelict museum. Here,
the Time Traveller finds a fresh supply of
matches and fashions a crude weapon
against Morlocks, whom he must fight to
get his machine back. He plans to take
Weena back to his own time. Because the
long and tiring journey back to Weena's
home is too much for them, they stop in
the forest for the night. They are then
overcome by Morlocks in the night,
whereby Weena faints. The Traveller
escapes when a small fire he had left
behind them to distract the Morlocks turns
into a forest fire; Weena and the pursuing
Morlocks are lost in the fire and the Time
Traveller is devastated over his loss.
The Morlocks open the Sphinx and use the
time machine as bait to capture the
Traveller, not understanding that he will
use it to escape. He reattaches the levers
before he travels further ahead to roughly
30 million years from his own time. There
he sees some of the last living things on a
dying Earth: Menacing reddish crab-like
creatures slowly wandering the blood-red
beaches chasing enormous butterflies, in
a world covered in simple lichenous
vegetation. He continues to make jumps
forward through time, seeing Earth's
rotation gradually cease and the sun grow
larger, redder, and dimmer, and the world
falling silent and freezing as the last
degenerate living things die out.

Overwhelmed, he goes back to the

machine and 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 Time Traveller relates his adventures
to his disbelieving visitors, producing as
evidence two strange white flowers Weena
had put in his pocket.

The original narrator then takes over and

relates that he returned to the Time
Traveller's house the next day, finding him
preparing for another journey and
promising to return in a short time.
However, the narrator reveals that he has
waited three years before writing and
stating the Time Traveller has not returned
from his journey.

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)[17] does not appear in either of the
1895 editions of the book.[18][19][20] 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."[21] This portion of the story was
published elsewhere as "The Final Men"
(1940)[22] and "The Grey Man".[23] 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[24] 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.[25] 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.[26]
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.[27]

Subtext of the names Eloi and

Morlock

The name Eloi is the Hebrew plural for

Elohim, or lesser gods, in the Old
Testament.[28]

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 mollocks – what miners might call
themselves – or a Scots word for
rubbish,[28] or a reference to the Morlacchi
community in Dalmatia.[29]

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.[30] The Sphinx appeared on the
cover of the first London edition as
requested by Wells and would have been
familiar to his readers.[28]
The white flowers can symbolize
Weena's devotion and innocence and
contrast with the machinery of the time
machine.[30] 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.[30]

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.[31]

2009 BBC Radio 3 broadcast

Robert Glenister starred as the Time

Traveller, with William Gaunt as H. G. Wells
in a new 100-minute radio dramatisation
by Philip Osment, directed by Jeremy
Mortimer as part of a BBC Radio Science
Fiction season. This was the first
adaptation of the novella for British radio.
It was first broadcast on 22 February 2009
on BBC Radio 3[32] and later published as a
2-CD BBC audio book.

The other cast members were:

Donnla Hughes as Martha

Gunnar Cauthery as Young H. G. Wells
Stephen Critchlow as Filby, friend of the
young Wells
Chris Pavlo as Bennett, friend of the
young Wells
Manjeet Mann as Mrs. Watchett, the
Traveller's housemaid
 Jill Crado as Weena, one of the Eloi and
the Traveller's partner
Robert Lonsdale, Inam Mirza, and Dan
Starkey as other characters

The adaptation retained the nameless

status of the Time Traveller and set it as a
true story told to the young Wells by the
time traveller, which Wells then re-tells as
an older man to the US journalist, Martha,
whilst firewatching on the roof of
Broadcasting House during the Blitz. It
also retained the deleted ending from the
novella as a recorded message sent back
to Wells from the future by the traveller
using a prototype of his machine, with the
traveller escaping the anthropoid creatures
to 30 million AD at the end of the universe
before disappearing or dying there.

Big Finish

On 5 September 2017, Big Finish

Productions released an adaptation of The
Time Machine. This adaptation was written
by Marc Platt and starred Ben Miles as the
Time Traveller.

Platt explained in an interview that

adapting The Time Machine to audio was
not much different from writing Doctor
Who, and that he could see where some of
the roots of early Doctor Who came
from.[33]

Film adaptations

1949 BBC teleplay

The first visual adaptation of the book was

a live teleplay broadcast from Alexandra
Palace on 25 January 1949 by the BBC,
which starred Russell Napier as the Time
Traveller and Mary Donn as Weena. No
recording of this live broadcast was made;
the only record of the production is the
script and a few black and white still
photographs. A reading of the script,
however, suggests that this teleplay
remained fairly faithful to the book.[34]

1960 film

In 1960, the novella was made into a US

science fiction film, also known
promotionally as H.G. Wells's The Time
Machine. The film starred Rod Taylor, Alan
Young, and Yvette Mimieux. The film was
produced and directed by George Pal, who
also filmed a 1953 version of Wells's The
War of the Worlds. The film won an
Academy Award for time-lapse
photographic effects showing the world
changing rapidly.
In 1993, Rod Taylor hosted Time Machine:
The Journey Back reuniting him with Alan
Young and Whit Bissell, featuring the only
sequel to Mr. Pal's classic film, written by
the original screenwriter, David Duncan. In
the special were Academy Award-winners
special effect artists Wah Chang and Gene
Warren.

1978 television film

Sunn Classic Pictures produced a

television film version of The Time
Machine as a part of their "Classics
Illustrated" series in 1978. It was a
modernization of the Wells's story, making
the Time Traveller a 1970s scientist
working for a fictional US defence
contractor, "the Mega Corporation". Dr. Neil
Perry (John Beck), the Time Traveller, is
described as one of Mega's most reliable
contributors by his senior co-worker Branly
(Whit Bissell, an alumnus of the 1960
adaptation). Perry's skill is demonstrated
by his rapid reprogramming of an off-
course missile, averting a disaster that
could destroy Los Angeles. His reputation
secures a grant of $20 million for his time
machine project. Although nearing
completion, the corporation wants Perry to
put the project on hold so that he can head
a military weapon development project.
Perry accelerates work on the time
machine, permitting him to test it before
being forced to work on the new project.

2002 film

The 1960 film was remade in 2002,

starring Guy Pearce as the Time Traveller,
a mechanical engineering professor
named Alexander Hartdegen, Mark Addy
as his colleague David Filby, Sienna
Guillory as Alex's ill-fated fiancée Emma,
Phyllida Law as Mrs. Watchit, and Jeremy
Irons as the Uber-Morlock. Playing a quick
cameo as a shopkeeper was Alan Young,
who featured in the 1960 film. (H.G. Wells
himself can also be said to have a "cameo"
appearance, in the form of a photograph
on the wall of Alex's home, near the front
door.)

The film was directed by Wells's great-

grandson Simon Wells, with an even more
revised plot that incorporated the ideas of
paradoxes and changing the past. The
place is changed from Richmond, Surrey,
to downtown New York City, where the
Time Traveller moves forward in time to
find answers to his questions on 'Practical
Application of Time Travel;' first in 2030
New York, to witness an orbital lunar
catastrophe in 2037, before moving on to
802,701 for the main plot. He later briefly
finds himself in 635,427,810 with toxic
clouds and a world laid waste (presumably
by the Morlocks) with devastation and
Morlock artifacts stretching out to the
horizon.

It was met with mixed reviews and earned

$56 million before VHS/DVD sales. The
Time Machine used a design that was very
reminiscent of the one in the Pal film but
was much larger and employed polished
turned brass construction, along with
rotating glass reminiscent of the Fresnel
lenses common to lighthouses. (In Wells's
original book, the Time Traveller
mentioned his 'scientific papers on
optics'). Hartdegen becomes involved with
a female Eloi named Mara, played by
Samantha Mumba, who essentially takes
the place of Weena, from the earlier
versions of the story. In this film, the Eloi
have, as a tradition, preserved a "stone
language" that is identical to English. The
Morlocks are much more barbaric and
agile, and the Time Traveller has a direct
impact on the plot.
Derivative work

Time After Time (1979 film)

In Time After Time, H.G. Wells invents a

time machine and shows it to some
friends in a manner similar to the first part
of the novella. He does not know that one
of his friends is Jack The Ripper. The
Ripper, fleeing police, escapes to the future
(1979), but without a key which prevents
the machine from remaining in the future.
When it does return home, Wells follows
him in order to protect the future (which he
imagines to be a utopia) from the Ripper.
In turn, the film inspired a 2017 TV series
of the same name.

Comics

Classics Illustrated was the first to adapt

The Time Machine into a comic book
format, issuing an American edition in July
1956.

The Classics Illustrated version was

published in French by Classiques Illustres
in Dec 1957, and Classics Illustrated Strato
Publications (Australian) in 1957, and
Kuvitettuja Klassikkoja (a Finnish edition)
in November 1957. There were also
Classics Illustrated Greek editions in 1976,
Swedish in 1987, German in 1992 and
2001, and a Canadian reprint of the
English edition in 2008.

In 1976, Marvel Comics published a new

version of The Time Machine, as #2 in their
Marvel Classics Comics series, with art by
Alex Niño. (This adaptation was originally
published in 1973 by Pendulum Press as
part of their Pendulum Now Age Classics
series; it was colorized and reprinted by
Marvel in 1976.)

In 1977, Polish painter Waldemar

Andrzejewski adapted the novel as a 22-
page comic book, written in Polish by
Antoni Wolski.

From April 1990, Eternity Comics

published a three-issue miniseries
adaptation of The Time Machine, written by
Bill Spangler and illustrated by John Ross
— this was collected as a trade paperback
graphic novel in 1991.

In 2018, US imprint Insight Comics

published an adaptation of the novel, as
part of their "H. G. Wells" series of comic
books.
Sequels by other authors
Wells's novella has become one of the
cornerstones of science-fiction literature.
As a result, it has spawned many
offspring. Works expanding on Wells's
story include:

La Belle Valence by Théo Varlet and

André Blandin (1923) in which a
squadron of World War I soldiers find
the Time Machine and are transported
back to the Spanish town of Valencia in
the 14th century. Translated by Brian
Stableford as Timeslip Troopers (2012).
Die Rückkehr der Zeitmaschine (1946) by
Egon Friedell was the first direct sequel.
It dwells heavily on the technical details
of the machine and the time-paradoxes
it might cause when the time machine
was used to visit the past. After visiting
a futuristic 1995 where London is in the
sky and the weather is created by
companies, as well as the year 2123
where he meets two Egyptians who
study history using intuition instead of
actual science, the time traveler, who is
given the name James MacMorton,
travels to the past and ends up weeks
before the time machine was built,
causing it to disappear. He is forced to
use the miniature version of his time
machine, which already existed at that
time, to send telegraphic messages
through time to a friend (the author),
instructing him to send him things that
will allow him to build a new machine.
After returning to the present, he tells
his friend what happened. The 24,000-
word German original was translated
into English by Eddy C. Bertin in the
1940s and eventually published in
paperback as The Return of the Time
Machine (1972, DAW).
The Hertford Manuscript by Richard
Cowper, first published in 1976. It
features a "manuscript", which reports
the Time Traveller's activities after the
end of the original story. According to
this manuscript, the Time Traveller
disappeared, because his Time Machine
had been damaged by the Morlocks
without him knowing it. He only found
out when it stopped operating during his
next attempted time travel. He found
himself on 27 August 1665, in London
during the outbreak of the Great Plague
of London. The rest of the novel is
devoted to his efforts to repair the Time
Machine and leave this time period
before getting infected with the disease.
He also has an encounter with Robert
Hooke. He eventually dies of the disease
on 20 September 1665. The story gives
a list of subsequent owners of the
manuscript until 1976. It also gives the
name of the Time Traveller as Robert
James Pensley, born to James and
Martha Pensley in 1850 and
disappearing without trace on 18 June
1894.
The Space Machine by Christopher
Priest, first published in 1976. Because
of the movement of planets, stars, and
galaxies, for a time machine to stay in
one spot on Earth as it travels through
time, it must also follow the Earth's
trajectory through space. In Priest's
book, a travelling salesman damages a
Time Machine similar to the original,
and arrives on Mars, just before the start
of the invasion described in The War of
the Worlds. H.G. Wells appears as a
minor character.
Morlock Night by K. W. Jeter, first
published in 1979. A steampunk fantasy
novel in which the Morlocks, having
studied the Traveller's machine,
duplicate it and invade Victorian
London. This culminates in Westminster
Abbey being used as a butcher shop of
human beings by the Morlocks in the
20th century, and a total disruption and
collapse of the time stream. There the
hero and Merlin must find – and destroy
– the Time Machine, to restore the time
stream and history.
Time Machine II by George Pal and Joe
Morhaim, published in 1981. The Time
Traveller, named George, and the
pregnant Weena try to return to his time,
but instead land in the London Blitz,
dying during a bombing raid. Their
newborn son is rescued by an American
ambulance driver and grows up in the
United States under the name
Christopher Jones. Sought out by the
lookalike son of James Filby, Jones
goes to England to collect his
inheritance, leading ultimately to
George's journals, and the Time
Machine's original plans. He builds his
own machine with 1970s upgrades and
seeks his parents in the future. Pal also
worked on a detailed synopsis for a third
sequel, which was partly filmed for a
1980s U.S. TV special on the making of
Pal's film version of The Time Machine,
using the original actors. This third
sequel, the plot of which does not seem
to fit with Pal's second, opens with the
Time Traveller enjoying a happy life with
Weena, in a future world in which the
Morlocks have died out. He and his son
return to save Filby in World War I. This
act changes the future, causing the
nuclear war not to happen. He and his
son are thus cut off from Weena in the
far future. The Time Traveller thus has to
solve a dilemma – allow his friend to
die, and cause the later death of
millions, or give up Weena forever.
The Man Who Loved Morlocks (1981)
and The Truth about Weena (1998) are
two different sequels, the former a novel
and the latter a short story, by David J.
Lake. Each of them concerns the Time
Traveller's return to the future. In the
former, he discovers that he cannot
enter any period in time he has already
visited, forcing him to travel into the
further future, where he finds love with a
woman whose race evolved from
Morlock stock. In the latter, he is
accompanied by Wells and succeeds in
rescuing Weena and bringing her back
to the 1890s, where her political ideas
cause a peaceful revolution.
The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter, first
published in 1995. This sequel was
officially authorised by the Wells estate
to mark the centenary of the original's
publication. In its wide-ranging narrative,
the Traveller's desire to return and
rescue Weena is thwarted by the fact
that he has changed history (by telling
his tale to his friends, one of whom
published the account). With a Morlock
(in the new history, the Morlocks are
intelligent and cultured), he travels
through the multiverse as increasingly
complicated timelines unravel around
him, eventually meeting mankind's far
future descendants, whose ambition is
to travel back to the birth of the
universe, and modify the way the
multiverse will unfold. This sequel
includes many nods to the prehistory of
Wells's story in the names of characters
and chapters.
In "The Richmond Enigma" by John
DeChancie, Sherlock Holmes
investigates the disappearance of the
Time Traveler, a contemporary and, in
this story, a distant relative. The
intervention of Holmes and Watson
succeeds in calling back the missing
Time Traveler, who has resolved to
prevent the time machine's existence,
out of concern for the danger it could
make possible. The story appeared in
Sherlock Holmes in Orbit (1995)[35]
The Steam Man of the Prairie and the
Dark Rider Get Down: A Dime Novel by
Joe R. Lansdale, first published in The
Long Ones (1999). In this story, the Time
Traveller accidentally damages the
space-time continuum and is
transformed into the vampire-like Dark
Rider.
The 2003 short story "On the Surface" by
Robert J. Sawyer begins with this quote
from the Wells original: "I have
suspected since that the Morlocks had
even partially taken it [the time machine]
to pieces while trying in their dim way to
grasp its purpose." In the Sawyer story,
the Morlocks develop a fleet of time
machines and use them to conquer the
same far future Wells depicted at the
end of the original, by which time,
because the sun has grown red and dim
and thus no longer blinds them, they can
reclaim the surface of the world.
The Time Traveller and his machine
appear in the story Allan and the
Sundered Veil by Alan Moore and Kevin
O'Neill, which acts as a prequel to The
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,
Volume One. The Time Traveller shares
an adventure with fellow literary icons
Allan Quatermain, John Carter, and
Randolph Carter.
David Haden's novelette The Time
Machine: A Sequel (2010) is a direct
sequel, picking up where the original
finished. The Time Traveller goes back
to rescue Weena but finds the Eloi less
simple than he first imagined, and time
travel far more complicated.
Simon Baxter's novel The British Empire:
Psychic Battalions Against the Morlocks
(2010) imagines a
steampunk/cyberpunk future in which
the British Empire has remained the
dominant world force until the Morlocks
arrive from the future.
Hal Colebatch's Time-Machine Troopers
(2011) (Acashic Publishers) is twice the
length of the original. In it, the Time
Traveller returns to the future world
about 18 years after the time he
escaped from the Morlocks, taking with
him Robert Baden-Powell, the real-world
founder of the Boy Scout movement.
They set out to teach the Eloi self-
reliance and self-defence against the
Morlocks, but the Morlocks capture
them. H.G. Wells and Winston Churchill
are also featured as characters.
Paul Schullery's The Time Traveller's
Tale: Chronicle of a Morlock Captivity
(2012) continues the story in the voice
and manner of the original Wells book.
After many years' absence, the Time
Traveller returns and describes his
further adventures. His attempts to
mobilize the Eloi in their own defense
against the Morlocks failed when he
was captured by the Morlocks. Much of
the book is occupied with his deeply
unsettling discoveries about the
Morlock / Eloi symbiosis, his gradual
assimilation into Morlock society, and
his ultimately successful attempt to
discover the true cause of humanity's
catastrophic transformation into two
such tragic races.
The Great Illustrated Classics in 1992
published an adaptation of Wells's
novella that adds an extra destination to
the Time Traveller's adventure: Stopping
in 2200 AD on his way back home, he
becomes caught up in a civil war
between factions of a technocratic
society that was established to avert
ecological catastrophe.
Beyond the Time Machine by Burt Libe
(2002). The first of two Time Machine
sequels written by US writer Burt Libe, it
continues the story of the Time
Traveller: where he finally settles down,
including his rescue of Weena and his
subsequent family with her. Highlighted
are exploits of his daughters Narra and
her younger sister Belinda; coping with
their 33rd-Century existence;
considering their unusual past and far-
Future heritage. Doing some time
travelling of their own, the daughters
revisit 802,701 AD, discovering that the
so-called dual-specie Eloi and Morlock
inhabitants actually are far more
complex and complicated than their
father's initial appraisal.
Tangles in Time by Burt Libe (2005). The
second of two Time Machine sequels
written by American writer Burt Libe, it
continues the story of younger daughter
Belinda, now grown at age 22. Her father
(the original Time Traveller) has just
died from old age, and she and Weena
(her mother) now must decide what to
do with the rest of their lives. Weena
makes a very unusual decision, leaving
Belinda to search for her own place in
time. Also, with further time travel, she
locates her two long-lost brothers,
previously thought to be dead; she also
meets and rescues a young man from
 the far future, finding herself involved in
a very confusing relationship.

See also
Novels
portal

El anacronópete
"The Chronic Argonauts"
Time travel in fiction
Soft science fiction
Human extinction
List of time travel science fiction
 The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume
Two, an anthology of the greatest
science fiction novels prior to 1965, as
judged by the Science Fiction Writers of
America
1895 in science fiction
Carcinisation, the observation that a
crab-like body plan has been
independently evolved by many species.
"Saul Gone"

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External links
Media related to The Time Machine at
Wikimedia Commons
The full text of The Time Machine at
Wikisource
 Quotations related to The Time
Machine at Wikiquote
The Time Machine (https://standardeboo
ks.org/ebooks/h-g-wells/the-time-machin
e) at Standard Ebooks

The Time Machine (https://gutenberg.or

g/ebooks/35) at Project Gutenberg
"Selected Bibliography of Scholarship on
H.G. Wells's The Time Machine" (https://
web.archive.org/web/20110726211840/
http://www.jurn.org/ejournal/bibliograph
y-on-the-time-machine.pdf)
The Time Machine (https://librivox.org/
search?title=The+Time+Machine&autho
 r=Wells&reader=&keywords=&genre_id=
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ded_language=&sort_order=catalog_dat
e&search_page=1&search_form=advanc
ed) public domain audiobook at
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