This will be the first in a long series of reviews covering what I hope to be many of the great and classic SF novels.  It started when I wrote my Sci-Fi Masters post.  I’ve read some of them, am familiar with most of them and their stories, but am not as thoroughly acquainted with the actual reading of them as I like. So when I saw a bunch of Verne and Wells sitting on the bookshelf at the UVU Bookstore, I couldn’t resist and picked up some Wells, they only had Vernes’  Journey to the Center of the Earth (which will be read next).

Is that burlap sack?

The Time Machine, written by H.G. Wells and published in 1895, is a very fun book to read, mainly because it was written in that century old style of English speaking, which is altogether a far more refined form of speech than we can presently find.  I am a simple reader, and thus more easily impressed, but the writing was aureate and flowed so as to seem as poetry in parts.  This aspect of Wells’ book, a meager 76 pages, added to a fanciful journey had by the Time Traveler, for such was the protagonist always referred.  The settings described in the perfect amount of detail as to relay what he was seeing, yet still allowing his narrative to be interpreted for the benefit of the audience.  Altogether a simple read which can quite easily be understood by all.

For this reason I feel it has sparked a multitude of spin-off movies and novels.  I have seen the more recent film staring Guy Pearce, as well as the 1960 version with Rod Taylor, neither of which accurately portray the original thematic elements contained within the book.  They might convey the divergent nature of the future humans and the struggle the Eloi and Morlocks (and in respect ourselves) are engaged in, but one important factor remains that Wells was very careful about in his writing of this generational book.  The only character specifically named is Weena, the Time Travelers only companion and solace in the year 802,701.  This is accomplished by having the whole book from the perspective of a guest of the Time Travelers, who relates his hearing of the Travelers experiences as he heard it from his host in the first person.  I hope that makes sense.

The experiences he has in that far flung future last a mere week, which I initially thought was an abitrarily short amount of time.  But when one remembers this would not be your typical ‘cut-off from’ and ‘lonely’ experience, but rather an altogether separate thing which we can only grasp as an idea, one week might seem like a lifetime.  That appears to be another compelling reason why this book has been so well recognized over the years, it opens up a completely new adventure, where a total worldview is never had.  I was left with numerous questions as to this futurity explored and yearned for the Traveler to have spent months, if not years in that time and have come back to relate all those experiences.

Instead, with a stroke of genius (which I was aware of, but not of the effect it might have upon me), Wells leaves us with a last glimpse of our inventor hero fading off into the future, never to be seen from again.  The epilogue, consisting of a single lengthy paragraph gave me what I asked for, chills.  Those sought after chills you feel crawl across your spine and propagate throughout the hard and soft tissues of your entire body, testifying that your mind will not be alone in remembering.

And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers – shriveled now, and brown and flat and brittle – to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.