Not my ususal type of read, but had to be read for university and surprisingly was much enjoyed.

Was pleased to pick up this book last night. Funnily enough I'd been thinking about it after reading Jekyll and Hyde. And like the Jekyll and Hyde book, this is really a novella, made to look like a normal length book by copious amounts of intro/ chronology/ notes/ further reading suggestions etc etc.

From the back cover;

Late in the nineteenth century, a Victorian scientist shows his disbelieving dinner guests a device he claims is a Time Machine. Respectable London scarcely has the imagination to cope with him. A week later they reconvene to find him ragged, exhausted and garrulous. The tale he tells is of the year 802,701 of life as it is lived exactly on the same spot, in what once had been London. He has visited the future, he has encountered the future-race – elfin, beautiful, vegetarian, leading a life of splendid idleness. But this is not the only race, these are not our only descendants. In the tunnels beneath the new Eden there lurks another life-form. Wells’s tale of the Victorian future is more than a fantastical yarn – it raises chilling questions about progress, social order, so-called civilisation and the ultimate fate of the world.

I read this as a teenager, all too many years ago! So it was good to be reminded of the detail about the Eloi, Weena and the Morlocks. I seem to recall being pretty scared by the Morlocks but can't see why now =:o)

"Well, [iron] mace in one hand and Weena in the other, I went out of that gallery and into another and still larger one, which at first glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered flags. The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I presently recognised as the decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left them. But here and there were warped boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been a literary man I might, perhaps, have moralised upon the futility of all ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck me with the keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified. At the time I will confess that I thought chiefly of the Philosophical Transactions and my own seventeen papers upon physical optics."

Author's favourite word: incontinently. I had to look this up as I only know it as a term for loss of voluntary bladder/ bowel control. Apparently the original meaning of the word was 'uncontrolled' or 'not restrained', so no surprises there really!

I have no doubt they could see me in that rayless obscurity, and they did not seem to have any fear of me apart from the light. But, so soon as I struck a match in order to see them, they fled incontinently, vanishing into dark gutters and tunnels, from which their eyes glared at me in the strangest fashion.

I only scanned the additional stuff but did find it interesting that Wells had written and re-written The Time Machine at least half a dozen times after it was first published in serial form in 1983. It then became his first novel in 1895.

Although I find the style very dated (but quaint) I want to look out for more H G Wells now.

RELEASE NOTES:

Think I read an abridged version of this at school, taken from the meetup.

Actually a much shorter read than I expected, as most of the book was the introduction and notes on the text.
A traveller moves forward in time and comes back to tell his friends about his experience. Instead of a highly sophisticated society, he comes across the Eloi, a simple people. All is not well in the future, there is evil lurking below in the form of the Morlocks, creatures which freaked me out when I saw the old film as a child. The Time Traveller saves the life of one of the Eloi, Weena, who, through her actions, helps him to come to understand the life in the future.

Thanks so much for your donation soffitta1!

This book is now part of the 1001-library. If you want to take this book from the library but don't know how to proceed, please refer to the 1001-library bookshelf.

taken from the 1001-book vbb, thanks :)

It's easy to see how groundbreaking this was when first written - for so many reasons.

In the post as a rabck to a fellow 1001-libary member