Book Review: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (48 in 2012? #37)

          I’m a huge fan of the time travel genre.  It must appeal to the science fiction fan in me.  I love the dilemmas and paradoxes it brings up.  I love the depth of character wanting to travel through time creates.  I love the adventure and fantasy that goes along with doing something we can only dream of accomplishing.  I’ve seen a ton of time travel movies.  I’ve watched a few time travel television shows.  Heck, I recently did a top 5 time travel movies list.  But I had never read the original time travel novel.  It’s sat in a pile of books since I was a young child and even though I’ve meant to pick it up for years, the only time it got touched was to move it to a new pile.  So it was more then past due when I finally opened the front cover and gave the H.G. Wells classic a read.
            As with most science fiction, The Time Machine is essentially a commentary on politics and society.  The concept of a machine that travels through time may very well be what history has taken from the story, but Wells had much more significant intentions.  At its heart The Time Machine is an anti-industrial revolution novel.  Wells sets up a future where man has conquered nature through technology and left without any sense of danger has become weak, dim and uninspired.  While we are nowhere near the point of the Eloi and Morlocks, I’m sure Wells would use today’s society as proof of his predictions.  Compared to men of his era, I’m sure those of us in this more “advanced” age would seem weak and dim.
            Looking at The Time Machine as a piece of literature or a piece of art, though, there is much to be desired.  There is an obvious lack of character development as we are never given much in the way of motivation or intent.  Everyone is very two dimensional and obviously there just to push along the stories agenda.  Wells style of writing, while never offensive, does not carry with it a sense of elegance or high art.  He is telling a story as efficiently as he can without any pomp or circumstance.
            The strength of The Time Machine clearly lies in its ideas more then in its writing, but those ideas are so creative and revolutionary the book becomes a must read.  This is the story that created a whole genre of story telling, a genre that has become one of the most popular, exciting and interesting genres out there.  None of what is in its 139 pages may seem original to a modern reader, but taken in context of history it is certainly essential reading to any science fiction fan.