H. G. Wells, together with as
Jules Verne, basically created the
Science Fiction genre. All authors afterwards from
Ray Bradbury to
Gene Roddenberry (of Star Trek fame) owe him a great debt. What can be easily misunderstood is that this genre is full of nonsensical, fantastic events and personages that have no real bearing on our everyday lives. H. G. Wells, along with any other important writer of the genre that you can name, all explore the
dialectic that we all experience. This is, of course, our fear and our growing alliance on technological advancement versus our joy and pride at the very same.
Delving just under the surface of the novel, we see what it obvious, that very dialectic of technology played out over an evolutionary scale. The joy of technology coming to a zenith in a civilization where all is provided; there is no more hunger, no more poverty, just a tranquil society of passive, peaceful people. This joy becomes somewhat shaded when the Time Traveler quickly learns that because of this seemingly effortless existence, man has become intelligence-free, their language obsolete and devolved into something “excessively simple – almost exclusively composed of concrete substantives and verbs” (Wells 41). Interestingly enough, while many scholars look at this work as a scathing rebuke of Capitalism, it doesn’t seem to do its job well. From the moment he meets the Eloi, the Time Traveler has a condescending distaste for them, treating them as children. He does recognize their way of life as an idea of his time, however:
“…I realized that there were no small houses to be seen. Apprently the single house, and possible even the household, had vanished….’Communism,” said I to myself” (Wells 30).
This shaded joy becomes steadily darker and darker as the Time Traveler begins to find out that there are two sets of evolutions. Technology has set the species against itself and the simple Eloi have become fodder for the Morlocks, a society of what has become of the lower classes and labourers of his time. It appears to the Time Traveler that these lower class beings have the skills to provide for the simple Eloi but have need of them as their primary food source. This may have taken place as the result of a long distant revolution (perhaps it began with the Russian Revolution). This question then presents itself, when do the oppressed become the oppressors? At what point does the pendulum swing too far in the opposite direction? Finally, whose fault is it when this eventually happens? These questions Wells does not attempt to answer, although many other authors have, George Orwell and Ayn Rand to name only two.
We know that Wells was interested in the capitalist-communism conflict, because he traveled to Russia to meet Lenin in 1914 and 1920 and once again to meet Stalin in 1934, the same year that he traveled to the U.S. to meet with President Roosevelt (Mac Adam xii). If he was trying to further the aims of Communism, it would seem he hasn’t done a very good job of it with The Time Machine. However, the book does give us a well-shaped morality play about the dialectic of progress, specifically the progress of the industrial revolution and the fear that it could have an effect on our actual or perceived evolution as a species. From an evolutionary standpoint, one can look at the novel both literally and figuratively and still be frightened by the possibilities it lays before one.
Sources: The Time Machine - H. G. Wells, introduction by William MacAdam.