The Time Machine. H.G. Wells. Signet Classics (2002). 118 pages.
This book was first published in 1895, but it could still give me fresh and interesting ideas. The story contained the time travelling concept, with the protagonist being identified as Time Traveller who has an incredible journey to over 800,000 years ahead by the machine he invents. There, he meets the evolutionary version of human beings, which not only do they have different body structure, but they also use different language and have different nature. Whatever the Time Traveller experiences in his journey both amazes and terrifies him.
The Time Machine is not a heavy-science fiction. There is not much introduction to the new technological concepts. However, what makes it so interesting is that the author also presented the ideas of socialism and eschatology. Unlike many science fictions which mostly show the development or the rise of technology that may affect human life in either positive or negative way, this book shows the downturn. The era to which the protagonist travels is in the point that everything, whether it be science or art term, has been plummeting. Moreover, in that era, the gap between upper class and working class is too wide that they seem to be impossible to converge again.
After reading this book, I felt like I want more from this author. His prediction is impressive. I've heard that some ideas he wrote in his books had later come true in reality. Even though some may not or maybe not yet happened, I still want to dig up his views even more, and I, therefore, will definitely read the other books of him.
Below there're some ideas or quotes that I've found interesting:
“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have a huge variety of needs and dangers.”
“Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions of life -- the true civilizing process that makes life more and more secure -- had gone steadily on to a climax... And the harvest was what I saw.”
“So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs.”
