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    The Time Machine
    The Time Machine
    The Time Machine
    Audiobook3 hours

    The Time Machine

    Written by H. G. Wells

    Narrated by Roger May

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    At a dinner party in Richmond, the host tells an astonishing story of his travels into the future. At first it seems that man has moved on to a higher plane of existence – suffering and war seem to have been eliminated. But in fact there are two races living on the Earth – the Eloi, a leisured, decadent, androgynous group; and the Morlocks, an underground tribe of bestial workers. When his time machine is stolen, the traveller is stranded in this strange new world and discovers that the truth is far darker than he could imagine... One of the greatest science fiction stories ever written, The Time Machine is an adventure story, a social commentary and a dark warning of the dangers facing humanity.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNaxos Audiobooks
    Release dateJul 24, 2010
    ISBN9781843794165
    Author

    H. G. Wells

    H. G. Wells (1866-1946) is best remembered for his science fiction novels, which are considered classics of the genre, including The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). He was born in Bromley, Kent, and worked as a teacher, before studying biology under Thomas Huxley in London.

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    Reviews for The Time Machine

    4/5

    270 ratings172 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Good, classic story but a little too cheerless for my liking.
    • 4/5
      H.G. Wells' famous story of the time machine, amazed that I've not read it until now. Listening is a transition as I go back to 19th century english, but fun. Scott Brick did a good job reading. Now, I'll search for the movies and compare them to the book, like everyone.
    • 4/5
      This very short novel is the classic birth of science fiction writing. The backdrop of time travel is used to discuss the ideas of how mankind and different economic classes of people will develop and play off of one another. The Time Traveler guesses that over time, the aristocrats or Eloi had become so used to living off the hard work of the working class Morlocks that they became complacent and lazy. In the end, they lost all drive and purpose and were fearful of the Morlocks who could only come out in the dark and would kidnap the Eloi to eat then. I found the story to be fascinating and I could not put it down until I finished. Wells was way ahead of his 19th century world and I really cannot wait to read another of his stories.
    • 3/5
      Leuk om lezen, maar stilistisch duidelijk nog onvolkomen. Goede spanning opbouw.Onthutsend inzicht: het verhaal van de mens is eindig!
    • 3/5
      I can’t say that I actually enjoyed The Time Machine by H. G. Wells but the fact that it was originally published in 1895 and is one of the first books to explore the theory of time travel gives this short novel a special place in history.The story is of a Victorian scientist who creates a time machine and travels to the year AD 802701, where he discovers a childlike race of humanoids called the Eloi. They live in a decaying city which leads the scientist to believe these are the remnants of a great civilization. He then must change his theory when he meets the Morlocks, who are threatening ape-like creatures that live in the dark underground. The narrative reads much like a critique of the class system that was prevalent in Britain at that time bringing together Wells love of both science and politics.The Time Machine paints a rather bleak future for mankind but it does have a very dated feel to it so I never took the story very seriously. The invented machine also had sounded quite dated and downright uncomfortable, having the traveller seated out in open exposed to the weather and other dangers. But before one writes off this story, one should remember the countless stories of time travel that have followed, and each story owes H. G. Wells a tip of the hat.
    • 4/5
      Before I actually read this book, I assumed that I had read it as a child, but now I am less sure. Perhaps I only saw the movie and knew the story line because the story line is that well known. Not certain. There were certainly ways in which it felt like a new read. At any rate, given how long ago it was written and given that I did know the story line, I assumed I would not enjoy the read all that much. I was wrong.To begin with, my copy is a Penguin, which means it had a readable and helpful Introduction and useful footnotes. The Introduction grounded me in Wells' context: His visions of our technical future, many details of which have proven true, although not those in this story, as yet, predate both radio and the airplane. So his imagination was impressive. On the other hand, he lived well into the 20th Century, so he was not so "pre-historic" as I thought of him being. Acutely, he saw future history as being "a race between education and catastrophe". Finally, there were many ways he was truly a man of his time, as well, grappling, as so many of his time did, with the moral and ethical implications of Darwin's recently published Origin of Species.I am in some ways an unforgiving or narrow-minded reader of fiction: I look for character development, plot and emotional grab. These attributes are not what make this book important. In my reading of the text itself, I found that the narrative contains more intellectual speculation than dramatic action, no character development and little or no depiction of meaningful relationships. For a whole novel, that would have been a bit much; for a novella, it did not bother me, especially as I was reading for historical interest and not, primarily, for fun. The language is mildly Victorian-verbose, but not too badly so. I also found that knowing the story line ahead of time freed me to appreciate the process of reading it. I found the ideas complex enough that I would consider re-reading it sometime.The rating is in context of its being a classic, not in comparison with contemporary R&R reads.
    • 5/5
      This story is well told. I enjoyed the nineteenth-century atmosphere of the Time Traveler's gatherings with his friends and Well's description of how the dim light of the smoking room illuminated the people within it. Wells pays attention to detail without spilling over into tedium, and the main story, which tells of the protagonist's travels forward into the future, was gripping, so that I didn't want to put the book down.
    • 4/5
      Wells is truly the master of science fiction. He takes us to a strange and mystifying world that alludes to the baseness of human nature.
    • 3/5
      I thought I knew what to expect from this book since there are so many references to it in popular culture. I was expecting an adventure story along the lines of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, using a time machine instead of steam ships. I was wrong. This is a dystopian novel with a pessimistic view of humanity's future. The format didn't work well for me. It's essentially a story within a story. The first person narrator recounts the story told by the Time Traveler after his return, with the Time Traveler's story also presented in first person. I like Sir Derek Jacobi, but his voice wasn't right for this book. It needed a reader with a younger voice. I love time travel stories that visit the past. After this experience with time travel into the future, I may stick with the past from now on.
    • 5/5
      This is a book you can ruminate on for hours! The book makes interesting comparisons between the creatures we may become, versus the creatures we are. H.G. Wells, as a character in the book, ultimately 'conquers' time by no longer being ruled by it. An engaging and thought-provoking story for any age, in my opinion.
    • 3/5
      Many years ago, I had read The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. I had totally forgotten what was written on those pages. As I began reading it again for a book club, I found myself lost in a classic that too many people never read.A man creates a time machine in which he travels very far into the future. The discoveries he encounters bring about a mixture of amazement, sadness, and horror. Mankind has become two distinct races with one living above earth in finery and sunshine and the other living below ground in a mutated form afraid of all light. The problem lies in the fact that the creatures living underground steal his time machine. In order to get back, he will have to venture into the dark unknown.Reading this story can be rather slow at times as the style of writing is vastly different than what we get today from contemporary writers. At times, the dialogue rambles along. In fact, most of the book is dialogue as the Time Traveler describes his experience to his dinner guests. This might be a turn off to younger readers who expect more modern writing.I had never looked at this story as a thriller or horror book but reading it again I could see it as such. There were times when I felt my skin crawl as the narrator described his encounter with the underground race.The ebook I read was a public domain copy and was free. With it came many editing issues but for just reading the classical piece it was not too bad.If you need to read this book for school, check out this free version though there are some out there that include study guides and other commentary. If you just have never read it, give it a try. It is not an extremely long book but it will take concentration as the style is so different than most are used to.Note: This book was free and obtained by myself. No one gave me the book with any expectation of a positive review.
    • 4/5
      The Time Traveler goes forward, 800,000 years into the future and recounts an odd world to a group of friends on his return. He tells them of two different branches of the human species, very opposed. The book really hilights the wrongs of society today and promotes the Communist theory. It was very interesting and not boring. I love HG Wells War of the Worlds and this was just as action filled. Classic sci-fi.
    • 4/5
      The story is the account of an unidentified narrator relaying what was told to him by The Time Traveller. After having created a machine to travel forward in time, the Traveller returns to tell his friends of the society he encountered.Man has evolved into two species. The Eloi, described as beautiful, playful, small people, live above ground in what appears to be a utopian society. The Morlocks are an albino, half-man, half-ape species that lives underground. Over his time with the Eloi, the Traveller develops the theory that the Eloi are the noble, ruling class. All goods are made by the Morlocks and the Eloi simply fill their days with play and eating. The Traveller later learns the ugly truth that the Eloi are actually the bred food source for the Morlocks.This was a super-quick read. However, Wells managed to pack in a lot of detail into a small space. He was very descriptive with an economy of words. The relationship of the two races makes an interesting social commentary about the working class and elites. I'm not familiar with politics of the late 1800s, but it's definitely something for consideration today.
    • 5/5
      The time traveler builds a time machine that takes him to year 802 701. There he meets the two forms humans have evolved into - the meek, cattle-like, vegatarians Eloi and the nocturnal, apelike, carnivorous Morlock. The two are opposed, and the time traveler takes the side of the Eloi, who " had kept too much of the human form not to claim my sympathy," but his intervention creates havoc.
    • 5/5
      I think this must have been one of the first novels to warn that the future might not be a Utopia. I found convincing because the unhappy future wasn’t caused by the establishment of an evil dictatorship or the destruction from a catastrophe. No, it came about as the logical climax of certain social trends, trends that are continuing in our time.What I have learned listening to audio versions of Wells’ classic science fiction novels, which I read when I was young, is that he not only an idea man but also a good novelist, with much skill at scene setting, world building, sharp characterizations, and sheer story telling.Scott Brick portrays the Time Traveler as an upper-class adventurer with a sneer in his voice that his terrible experiences do nothing to remove.
    • 3/5
      Strange and striking. It seems more like, say, Gulliver's Travels than something that was written in the late 19th century.
    • 4/5
      Six-word review: Time traveling into my own past.Extended review:I've just reread The Time Machine, one of a little batch of free titles I picked up for my new Kindle.Most of those public-domain freebies are things I've read before, long ago, as a teenager--in school (The Scarlet Letter), or in a 25-cent paperback (this one--The Time Machine), or in a faithfully adapted Classics Illustrated edition (The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man). Wells's ground-breaking story of time travel was one I read over and over as a youngster, transfixed and fascinated every time.I must admit that the magic has faded a little bit by now. Not only have I read quantities of fiction published in the fifty years since then, much of it building on those nineteenth-century foundations (and making them seem very primitive), but I've been jaded by decades of spectacular special effects in movies--and, of course, by the real drama of unforeseen advances in technology.Nonetheless, I was able to let myself slip into the right mood and go with it, dated style and conventions notwithstanding, and I found that some of the old wonder and thrill was still there.Wells uses the common nineteenth-century device of telling a story second hand: a nameless narrator reports the fantastic tale told by someone else, together with his observations of and comments on the storyteller. This allows him to skirt questions of veracity, to speculate on missing details, and to supply an ending. At a time before radio, television, and video technology provided household entertainment, storytelling and reading aloud were popular diversions, and so this format lent familiarity and verisimilitude.Wells's imagined world of nearly eight hundred thousand years into the future doesn't have to be believable in order to be vivid and affecting. The decay of civilization, the decline of humanity into a symbiotic pairing of opposites, and the poignant retrospective view on remnants of our time as obsolete museum pieces are depicted with intelligence and feeling. As he places hypothetical responsibility for those developments on the hubris and the very perceived strengths of his own time and culture, Wells delivers social commentary meant to give his own contemporaries pause for thought.I enjoyed the story on its own merits, an adventure in an alien society and landscape, full of charm and menace, as well as one that deserves a monument in the history of modern fiction. I also enjoyed it for sentimental reasons. I hope there are still some young folk today who can read a novel like this and see it as a representative of the early youth of the genre, without disparaging it for its naivete and inexperience.
    • 5/5
      A true science fiction classic! Most people know the story of H.G. Wells "The Time Machine" from one of the movies or maybe because it has been ingrained in our society for over 100 years. Even though I knew the story, I found reading the book exciting. Being able to see what a person, HG Wells in this case, thought about the future and what he knew about science back in the 18 hundreds was the best part for me. It was well written and kept me interested. 5stars!
    • 4/5
      Another classic that I took too long to read...

      I enjoyed this, but am glad (I think) that I read it after seeing the movie. The movie was nothing like this, and I could read the book and be pleasantly surprised at the differences, rather than watching the movie after knowing the book and being incredibly disappointed.

      It is a product of its era, however, and does read in the literary fashion that is common in other classics. If you like that style - as I do, when I'm in the mood for it - then this is a good book to read.
    • 3/5
      In his London bachelor quarters, a well-to-do amateur inventor and mechanics enthusiast astounds his friends with a tiny working model of what he describes as a time machine, which when a little lever is adjusted slightly, vanishes — into the future, according to the host. A week later, some of these same friends and others return for a second dinner, but when the host returns late, he looks haggard and his clothes are torn. He has, he tells them, journeyed on his machine (the full-sized model, like a stationary bicycle with special levers) far into the future — to 802,701 AD — when London no longer exists but in its place are strange ruins inhabited by a gentle, listless, indolent race of little people called the Eloi, who do no work and seem to make no special effort at all but are well-clothed and fed. He eventually discovers that underground lives another race of much more enterprising and savage little people, the Morlocks, who presumably manufacture the clothing and other necessities of the Eloi and ghost-like emerge at night to snatch some of them to carry back underground and cook and eat them. Such is the distant future of the division of London's social classes, the ever more indolent and incapable aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie, and the ever more savage laboring poor on whom they come to depend. This is not the first time-travel fantasy (see Wikipedia Time Travel in Fiction) nor even the first to claim a mechanical conveyance, but is the one that has inspired more imitators. The characters are exceedingly simple, the dialogue is completely monotone and the physical descriptions are also very simple, but the one thing this little book has going for it is its stimulating concept, time travel.
    • 3/5
      An interesting and thought provoking classic. I must admit, I didn't find it very enjoyable. The story presented the author's vision of what the human race may become in the very distant future. I found it hard to empathise with the main character and I expected the Morlocks to be more sinister.
    • 2/5
      While The Time Machine’s plot is pretty quick moving and interesting, and the world that Wells creates is intriguing, the book as a whole suffers from the same problems that I think most H.G. Wells novels suffer from. The characters are anonymous to the point of being uninteresting. “The time traveler” himself doesn’t even get a name, let alone much of a backstory. The narrator of the frame story refers to other characters as “Mr. ____” or “the editor” and provides no other characterizations. There’s a mysterious character who appears the night that the time traveler returns and tells his tale, but it’s never revealed who he is or why he’s important. This is an attribute of a lot of science fiction, especially written in this era. But I find it very difficult to understand a character’s motivations when the author provides no information about how they have come to the world—what they’ve seen before and how they might interpret the situations before them. The author develops a robust environment, but crucial details of it get lost when the reader can’t understand the main character’s train of thought. Also, and again like Wells’s other works I’ve read, the characters have an intolerably English-white-male-centric view of the world. From the little I know about Wells as a person, I understand that he was quite progressive for his time. But his nameless, featureless characters who travel to exotic and fantastic worlds with entirely different species and culture can only interpret things from the most basic, stereotypical, privileged viewpoint imaginable. All that said, The Time Machine contains some really interesting ideas. Even if the time traveler’s motivations aren’t always decipherable, his actions are entertaining, his descriptions are vivid, and his fear feels real. The reader is drawn into the mystery of the futuristic world he encounters and saddened to realize the horrible truth behind it. But for my taste, unique concepts and plotlines aren’t enough to sustain a novel.
    • 4/5
      H. G. Wells was clearly a master of the genre. "The Time Machine" works through both science and sociology, examining the dangers of aristocracy and Marxism in a thought experiment on the distant future of 802,701 AD.

      Wells uses pleasantly complex vocabulary, the allowance of which I envy. I wish I could write the words recondite, trammel, and fecundity in the first paragraph of a novel without alienating the vast majority of our modern, poorly educated audience. Alas, it cannot be so, lest I am already an established author with a profound influence that people will not simply ignore. Oh, well.

      This classic story lacks the stylized salvation present in both film adaptations of which I am aware. The Time Traveller does not rescue the Eloi, nor teach them resilience and strength - unless he does so in his final disappearance, after the end of the story. But we see his own thoughts, his own feelings, the distance he placed between himself and the horrors of a future he feared and hated.

      I enjoyed the book immensely. The roiling adventure combined with the intellectual science of the late 19th century is inspiring and pleasantly refreshing. Unlike the hard-lined, politicized dystopias of modern science fiction, Wells' "The Time Machine" plays with the ideas of peace versus conflict and the necessity of necessity. The Time Traveller's own view sees the technological and sociological progress of mankind as inevitably self-destructive, but the narrator intimates a desire to live for the best in life, to better ourselves and to seek greatness in spite of the danger of becoming the Eloi and the Morlocks.

      It is a conflict of opinion that leaves the decision up to the reader.

      If the book could be said to have any flaw, it would be its brevity, for as the story concluded, the one thing I desired was a continuation of the tale.
    • 5/5
      I surprisingly enjoyed this book VERY much! It's tiny, for one thing--I read it in a single car drive to Orlando. Usually I wouldn't be able to afford so much praise to a tiny book. Novella, really. But this book is a glorious exception.

      In it, a time traveler talks lucidly and plainly of his experiences traveling into the future. He sees two races of human-like species, descendants from modern day humans. However, they are "lower" than us and less intelligent life-forms.

      Wells conjectures on what made them this way over the hundreds of thousands of years, and comes to the conclusion that our technology created a society that made it very easy for humans to survive. Intelligence no longer became a factor in reproduction, as is necessary to ensure intelligent offspring. Therefore you get this end result!

      Wells wrote beautifully of social theorizing and what he suspects may happen in both the near and distant future. It's a great book for its time (written in 1895), with people just beginning to wonder about the ultimate effects of technology and increasing industry.

      I also enjoyed, by the way, Wells' numerous comments about the continuing heart and sentiment and love of humans, and our capacity for gratitude, which he portrayed so very nicely in the endearing Weena.
    • 4/5
      A Victorian gentleman-scientist known only as the "Time Traveler" builds a machine that can transport him far into the future or back into the past. The machine takes the Time Traveler all the way to 802,701 A.D., where he finds that humanity has split into two separate species: the attractive but intellectually-limited Eloi, who dwell above ground in empty-minded happiness, and the brutish Morlocks, who live underground and fear light. The symbolism isn't very subtle; when the Time Traveler returns to the present day he tells his friends that he believes the dim Eloi are the descendants of the British upper crust, while the uncouth Morlocks' ancestry goes back to the country's working classes. He conjectures that the relative ease of Eloi lives caused the species' moral, physical and intellectual deterioration over the centuries. The Morlocks are still subservient to the Eloi in some respects, but after thousands of years, the underground creatures have found a shocking way to take advantage of the surface-dwellers' fragility.In Wells' pessimistic vision, the forces of natural selection have led not to the improvement of humanity, as is commonly supposed, but to its decline. Despite the novella's age and familiarity (there are several adaptations and movie versions), I was surprised at how engrossing this work still is. I highly recommend it.
    • 3/5
      A good book, one that is an epitome of early science fiction. I enjoyed the journey, but it was altogether short- but still plentiful of interesting happenings. It was heavily description based with the only dialogue returning when the Time traveller returns and recounts his story. Still, a worthwhile tale.
    • 4/5
      This is a really short read, but no less impactful. Wells really was ahead of his time in the prediction of man's future on earth. Yes, certainly, what he predicted for our future has not happened...yet...and we will never know in our lifetimes (or our childrens' lifetimes) if it will happen this way. But I believe the future of our world is bound to end up similarly, especially if mankind doesn't start changing its ways now. And, of course, it's a question of evolution as well. Wells was an expert craftsman in his depiction of the starkly different characters of the Eloi and the Morlocks. Again, for a very short book, the story packs quite a punch. I listened to it on audio and it was very easy book to listen to in this way.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyable and easy to read, this is also relevant today. The haves and the have nots stand out in our society and wells has predicted this. As with some of his other predictions will he be accurate about our ultimate fate?
    • 5/5
      Wells was the first time-traveller, from his mind onto the pages of this marvelous book! I must have read this at least three or four times over the years, and it doesn't change for anything but the better.
    • 3/5
      This is a seminal work of science fiction, and as such blazed the trail for the genre as a whole. Reading it over 100 years after initial publication, gives me a sense of understanding science fiction. While taking this into consideration, as well as being a product of the Victorian era, I still found The Time Traveler to be more than a little overwrought in this tale. One surprising thing I learned was that Kodak did indeed have a camera available in 1895 and HG Wells must have been very well informed.