The Time Machine Review

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

I was looking for shorter books that I could knock out on the nights my youngest asks me to stay in bed until they fall asleep. I found The Time Machine by H.G. Wells on the ol’ Kindle app and figured, what the heck. For a hundred-page book, it took me longer than it should have, but we got it moved over into the completed column.

“Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness.”

First published in 1895, The Time Machine still holds up surprisingly well. It predates what I consider modern science fiction, but it doesn’t feel out of place among today’s speculative fiction. It’s not just a tale about a man who builds a machine to travel through time. It’s a quiet meditation on class, entropy, and the possible fate of humanity.

The story follows the unnamed Time Traveller as he journeys 800,000 years into the future, where he finds the world divided between the surface-dwelling Eloi and the subterranean, predatory Morlocks. What first seems like a peaceful utopia quickly reveals itself as something much darker. Wells doesn’t deliver a hopeful view of the future. He gives us a world where comfort has bred weakness and labor has turned into violence.

“Man had been content to live in ease and delight upon the labours of his fellow-man... and in the fullness of time Necessity had come home to him.”

The shadow of the Industrial Revolution looms large, and its anxieties run through every page. The Time Traveller’s journey isn’t about adventure. It’s about discovering that the class struggles and inequalities of the past might never vanish—they just evolve.

Despite its short length, the book is packed with ideas. And while the science may be dated, the philosophy isn’t. Wells raises timeless questions: What is the true cost of progress? What happens when curiosity dies out? Can a society grow without conflict?

The Time Traveller is both scientist and skeptic, someone in pursuit of knowledge but unprepared for the consequences of his discovery. He’s not a typical hero, and the story doesn’t wrap up with easy answers. It lingers, not because of action, but because of the questions it forces you to consider.

“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble... There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change.”