The Time Machine Or: When a Victorian Guy Invents a Time Uber and Gets Ghosted by the Future 🛠️🕰️💨

🌀 Why It’s Still Timeless (Literally)

Published in 1895, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells is the granddaddy of all time travel fiction. Before Doctor Who, before Back to the Future, before that one Rick and Morty episode where things got real weird — Wells asked: What happens when you go way, waaay into the future… and realize humanity has totally flopped?

Spoiler: It gets dystopian real quick.

This book kickstarted the sci-fi genre's obsession with time loops, paradoxes, and the haunting realization that the future might not be flying cars and robot butlers — but caves, fear, and the eerie sound of underground creatures.

👨‍🔬 Who Cooked This Up?

Herbert George Wells (aka H.G. Wells), was that guy in late 19th-century Britain. Born in 1866, he basically invented science fiction as we know it. With The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, Wells wasn’t just imagining aliens and tech — he was calling out classism, capitalism, and the downfall of society. Politely. With lasers.

⏱️ Plot Summary: Time Travel but Make It Existential

Meet the Time Traveller (no name, very mysterious, 10/10 Victorian enigma). He builds a literal time machine in his lab and decides to test it by zooming forward… a few thousand years.

He lands in the year 802,701 AD — and it’s giving ✨vibes of peace and pastel ✨. The Earth looks like a botanical garden. Everything’s calm. The people? Small, soft, chill creatures called Eloi who just eat fruit and vibe.

But something feels… off.

Turns out, there’s a second group — the Morlocks. Pale, creepy, live underground, and only come out at night. Oh, and they might be snacking on Eloi. Cannibalism, but make it Victorian horror.

The Time Traveller gets his machine stolen by the Morlocks and has to play survival hero, all while realizing this future is the long-term result of class division. Eloi = upper class gone soft. Morlocks = working class turned monstrous.

Eventually, he gets his machine back, zips further ahead in time, sees a dying Earth under a red sun, and then zooms back to his own time.

He tells his dinner guests all of this, and they’re like: sure, Jan. Then he disappears again... and never returns.

🧍 Characters You Should Know

• The Time Traveller – Inventor, narrator, existential adventurer, totally committed to the bit.

• Weena – A fragile Eloi girl the Traveller befriends. Symbol of innocence in a post-human world.

• The Eloi – Beautiful, peaceful, helpless. Literally allergic to thinking.

• The Morlocks – Scary, industrial, nocturnal. They run things… and maybe eat things.

💭 Themes That Still Go Hard

🕳️ Class Warfare Forever

The Eloi and Morlocks aren’t just future species — they’re metaphors. Wells is calling out how unchecked capitalism and social division could mutate into something monstrous over millennia.

💡 The Futility of Progress

Technology advanced, society collapsed. The Time Traveller’s invention is genius, but it takes him to a world where all that knowledge meant nothing.

🦴 Survival of the Fittest?

It’s Darwinism in slow motion. The strong become weak. The oppressed become predators. It’s evolution with a horror twist.

📉 Entropy and Doom

Wells doesn’t offer a hopeful future — just decay, extinction, and a final sunset. Existential crisis unlocked.

🕰️ Symbols & Imagery

• The Time Machine – Science, ambition, the urge to control time — and the inability to escape consequences.

• Light vs Darkness – Eloi live in daylight, Morlocks rule the dark. Classic, but with deeper class-coded meaning.

• The Red Sun – A dying Earth. Time as a slow funeral march.

🎬 Pop Culture Throwbacks

• 1960 Film – Campy, classic, Oscar-winning effects.

• 2002 Film (with Guy Pearce) – Sexy inventor tries to undo trauma. Time loops + action.

• Every Time Travel Story Ever – If someone’s using a time machine, thank Wells for the idea.

🧃 Why It’s Still Giving

Because The Time Machine isn’t just about cool gadgets and future worlds — it’s a haunting look at where society might be headed. It asks: What happens when we stop evolving emotionally? When comfort breeds weakness? When oppression is left unchecked for thousands of years?

And also… because being invisible isn’t nearly as scary as being forgotten by history.