On the myclasses portal where this learning episode was found there were links to three texts: two adaptations of HG Wells The Time Machine in film and a link to the full novel in online text format. The following text with links were offered to the students, excluding images from broadcast films, due to copyright reasons, and the full text of Wells' novel, due to its length. Citations for the texts are available in the Readings and Further Links and Resource List.
Students attending a face-to-face class for this study watched the DVD versions of the film The Time Machine in its two versions as noted, using the class computer and overhead projector, while students studying as flexible learning were offered a copy of the films on CD-ROM, copied under the special provisions of local Copyright laws.
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Wells changed the way the world thought about time, and Humankind's place in time |
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The points at the start of these notes are to be discussed in the Forum area. You are asked to jump to the Forum area, using the link here and making a comment in the appropriate Forum thread. Please remember, your participation in discussions is expected in this study, as part of your overall participation.
A Background to Wells' The Time Machine
This learning episode is dedicated to the original novel, The Time Machine (1895) by HG Wells. You can find the full text of The Time Machine from the link at the bottom of this page if you would like to read the novel. It is worth the reading. It is the novel that gave birth to countless imitators. Complex and contradictory, the ideas of the novel have inspired SF writers for over a hundred years.
The Time Machine was the first of Wells' one hundred and twenty books and is described as "nearly his most perfect work" (Aldiss & Wingrove, 2001:115). It was an immediate success. Wells wrote what was called 'scientific romances' and these were later to be called 'ScientiFictions' and then 'Science Fiction'. He brought to the genre of Science Fiction a "popularity and a distinctness from other genres which it has never lost" (Aldiss & Wingrove, 2001:134).
HG Wells was born in 1866 in England on 21 September. He lived for eighty years and biographers have noted that Wells lived through enormous social and technological changes. Wells was "born in the year dynamite was invented; he lived to witness the inauguration of the nuclear age….(Aldiss & Wingrove, 2001:134)
A time machine as a literary device
As has been noted in work for learning episode three, the time machine invented by Wells was a wonderful literary device, a "crucial breakthrough in narrative technology, providing SF with one of its most significant facilitating devices, ultimately used in this instance to survey the kind of far future and end of the world prophesied ...by contemporary scientific knowledge" (Nicholls & Clute, 1995).
The use of a time machine as a literary device was an "historical break and a great inspiration" (Nicholls & Clute, 1995). The idea of time travel has been called a representative theme. This means that the use of the time machine allows the author to discuss ideas about the future, what the future society might be like. Beyond this, the SF critic Roberts says Wells had a great fascination with encountering difference embodied in a material form ((Roberts, 2000:61). Depictions of the future
Wells lived at the height of the British Empire, when many people believed that technology and science would revolutionize the world. There was a great deal of hope for the future and of course Wells use of science as a literary device seemed to show his belief in this improved future.
Wells' The Time Machine looks at many future times. Using the device of the strange chair, the narrator can actually watch the years roll past, speeding the passage of time to give an overview of the close future, then onwards and onwards literally hundreds of thousands of years into the future. The future depicted is bleak (jhclues, 2002), displaying its persistent theme of the destructive capabilities of technology, war and human nature not only in Wells' time but also again and again far into the future.
This bleak view of human nature and its use of technology for destruction is unexpected in many ways. The scientist adventurer seems to believe that "the powers of science will ultimately uncover the secrets of the natural world" (Hollinger, 1987). The sense of optimism for the use of technology in the future has been called Euchronianism, the "speculation about a better time - the great scientific utopia" (Alsford, 2000). There have been writers who imagined a great scientific utopia in the future, but HG Wells was not amongst these. Instead, HG Wells seemed to have "suspicion concerning science and technology coupled with the general disillusionment with human nature" (Alsford, 2000:107). Instead, HG Wells seems to have a cynical view of the future and instead gave warnings of a future dystopia (Alsford, 2000:107).
Wells' The Time Machine challenged the ideas of "progress as well as imperialism" (Aldiss & Wingrove, 2001). It had a skeptical view of the present with a pessimistic view of the future of mankind (Aldiss & Wingrove, 2001:115). In the context of his time, HG Wells was a subversive writer who argued against the dominant idea that the spread of the British Empire with its advanced technologies offered hope for the future. Time travel as social criticism
HG Wells was very interested in science and studied under the great biologist Thomas Huxley. HG Wells was a radical who believed in socialism. When he wrote The Time Machine Wells was very ill and he was paid one hundred pounds for his short novel. Even though Wells believed in the rights of the working man, his The Time Machine shows a future working class as a 'submerged nation', living in horrible factory-like pits below the ground and only coming up to devour the Eloi, who would seem to represent the idle rich. Wells seems to think that the working class of the city were threatening, and he depicted them as the ugly and brutish Morlocks of the far future (Beaumont, 2006). It is clear that Wells had contradictory attitudes towards the destiny of class relations at the end of his own time, the nineteenth century, and he showed a far future version of the working man as a monster of the far future.
The Time Machine is a profoundly ironic text (Hollinger, 1987) where the fantasy novel is a mode of subversion. The novel throws up many contradictory ideas and is far more complex than the film directed later by George Pal (1960), where the subtleties and complexities are smoothed over and the story more closely resembles a simple love story.
George Pal's adaptation of The Time Machine
Geroge Pal's 1960 film adaptation of The Time Machine avoided depicting the Morlocks as far future versions of London's working class. Instead, the depictions of humn folly and the use of technology to create ever more devastating wars was seen, including the use of the Hydrogen bomb on a future city. In the film, the Eloi are beautiful and fragile and the Morlocks monstrous and almost devlish. As a depiction of the future, this is still bleak scene, but there is also a glimmer of hope. The film gives the impression of "Man putting one foot in front of the other since Time began: Hope. That's the legacy of H.G. Wells and the promise of George Pal" (jhclues, 2002). The film becomes a story of guarded hope, especially as the Traveller returns to the far future to recover his lost love, symbolised by the beautiful and individual flower he brought back from that future.
Simon Wells' The Time Machine
The later version of The Time Machine (2002) by Simon Wells has even less interest in the class distinctions between the future species. In fact, this most recent adaptation (here by HG Wells dragnson) breaks the tradition of the brutish, master Morlocks and instead introduces a sort of renegade Eloi as the head of the Morlocks.
This version also starts with an attempt to use the time machine to reverse a tragic accident. Why HG Wells' lover cannot be saved by time travel is not explained at all clearly but instead the viewer is meant to believe that her untimely death is simple and irreversible fate, again a significant departure from HG Wells; original themes.
Wells changed the way the world thought about time, and Humankind's place in time
Even the two movies based on HG Wells' The Time Machine share similarities with the original novel. These similarities can be hard to see clearly, because they are now so well understood.
The first point to note is that HG Wells changed the way people thought about time. He was, " ...the first of his age to see clearly that our globe is one, the people on it one - and the people beyond the globe, if they exist. He helped us understand that present history is but a passing moment, linked to distant past and distant future. It was Wells who said, 'Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.' (Aldiss & Wingrove, 2001:133)
The Time Machine saw the people of Earth as linked. They can fight together for a common cause, or die together due to Humankind's own weak nature. Also, Wells' reminded his readers (and viewers through the later films) that the present is just one 'now' in a continuous arrow of time that stretches from the beginning of the universe to its eventual implosion.
Resource List:
Aldiss, B. & Wingrove, D. (2001). Trillion Year Spree: the History of Science Fiction. Second edition. Thirsk, North Yorkshire: House of Stratus.
Alsford, M. (2000). What If?: Religious Themes in Science Fiction. Darton, Longman & Todd: London. Beaumont, M. (2006). 'Red Sphinx: Mechanics of the Uncanny in The Time Machine'. Science Fiction Studies. Number 98, Volumne 33, Part 1. March, 2006.
jhclues (2002). 'George Pal Realizes His Vision'. IMDb Movie Guide. Retrieved 6 September, 2006 from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054387/
Pal, G. (Director). (1960). The Time Machine. Written by David Duncan. Based on the novel by HG Wells. Paramount Pictures.
Wells, S. (Director). (2002) The Time Machine. Written by David Duncan. Based on the novel by HG Wells. Paramount Pictures.
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Further readings and links: |
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'Time's Arrow' by Arthur C Clarke |
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'A Sound of Thunder', by Ray Bradbury |
| Complete text of 'All you zombies' by Robert Heinlein | |
| Complete text of 'By his bootstraps', by Robert Heinlein | |
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ends
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| enemy within | brave new world | fate and predestination | the shape of things to come | ghost in the shell |
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