Alex James's Blog: AlexJamesNovels Blog - Posts Tagged "invention"

HG Well’s The Time Machine is Victorian science-fiction that combines time-travel with speculation on the fate of humanity’s future and modern civilisation. It’s an elegantly written novel, somewhat like an essay examining the strengths and weaknesses of the major political ideologies of the nineteenth century: Marx and Engels particularly.

Many parallels can be made between Marx’s vision of a communist utopia, and HG Well’s almost satirized version, which he witnesses in the future in 800, 000 years’ time. I message I comprehended was that a socially stratified society divided into a work-force and a privileged class would come back to haunt us in the future: that the measures and securities we enforce to create a strong distinction between the have’s and have-not’s will lead to a polarisation of intelligence, and indeed may invert it in a way we would least expect. Besides the obvious connections to make between the Time Machine and the time HG Wells lived in, there was little recognisable in the future for the modern reader.

The author has a peculiar, signature writing style that is eloquent, well thought-out, and not unlike Dickens. His ability to use the foundations of profound political thinkers and scientific knowledge to foresee a future that is so revolting, ugly, and well … unacceptable to most who live in the present; proves that he is willing to go where others don’t dare, and this is quite beside his unusual range of ideas.

Overall, I would not just simply recommend The Time Machine; after having read the War of the Worlds; it would be foolish at this stage not to recommend the author himself.