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The Time Machine
 It
was his first original novel that established his reputation. The novel was
a social allegory. Compared with his later works, The Time Machine is
short, and most of the story is told as a
monologue, in
flashback, erasing
much sense of tension or interaction. But as the first novel to address the
idea of traveling in time, it sparkles with fantastic, thoughtful
descriptions. The story was about a Time Traveler’s voyage into the future.
The Time Traveler creates a special time vehicle that can travel through
time. The machine brings him to the later year 802,701, only to find a world
divided into two races of people: a decadent class, the Elois and the
eternal underclass, Morlocks. The Elois are small delicate creatures living
in a paradisiacal world and have lost the physical power to labor. The
Morlocks are ape-like creatures living inhuman lives below ground and work
in workshops. The Morlocks work and feed the Elois in the daytime but at
night they emerge from underground and prey on the Elois for meat. After the
breathtaking adventure with Morlocks, he gets back into his time machine and
leaves that time.
The tale of 802,701 is political commentary of late
Victorian England. On the one hand, the Elois are the descendents of the
modern bourgeoisie who live parasitic life with pleasure and luxury; on the
other hand, the Morlocks are offspring of the working class living a
miserable life. The obvious theme of the novel is the continuing class
struggle. It is a vision of a troubled future and a bitter criticism of the
capitalist system. Here are excerpt paragraphs in which the Time Traveler
fist arrived in the new future world and meet the Elois in Chapter 3:
“My sensations would
be hard to describe. As the columns of hail grew thinner, I saw the white
figure more distinctly. It was very large, for a silver birch-tree touched
its shoulder. It was of white marble, in shape something like a winged
sphinx, but the wings, instead of being carried vertically at the sides,
were spread so that it seemed to hover. The pedestal, it appeared to me, was
of bronze, and was thick with verdigris. It chanced that the face was
towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me; there was the faint
shadow of a smile on the lips. It was greatly weather-worn, and that
imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease. I stood looking at it for a
little space - half a minute, perhaps, or half an hour. It seemed to advance
and to recede as the hail drove before it denser or thinner. At last I tore
my eyes from it for a moment and saw that the hail curtain had worn
threadbare, and that the sky was lightening with the promise of the Sun……
Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the
bushes by the White Sphinx were the heads and shoulders of men running. One
of these emerged in a pathway leading straight to the little lawn upon which
I stood with my machine. He was a slight creature - perhaps four feet high -
clad in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a leather belt. Sandals or
buskins - I could not clearly distinguish which - were on his feet; his legs
were bare to the knees, and his head was bare. Noticing that, I noticed for
the first time how warm the air was.
He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful
creature, but indescribably frail. His flushed face reminded me of the more
beautiful kind of consumptive - that hectic beauty of which we used to hear
so much. At the sight of him I suddenly regained confidence. I took my hands
from the machine.”
The Island of Dr. Moreau
 A young
biologist Edward Prendick undergoes a shipwreck and drifted onto an island.
There he discoveries the scientist Dr. Moreau who creates a half-monster and
half-human creatures to work for him. These creatures are compelled to adapt
to human habits, such as walking on two legs, wearing clothes, building
simple houses and even speaking. They are threatened by Dr. Moreau with
punishment for any violation. But the experiment goes out of control. The
animals quickly reverted to their barbarism. They become violent and kill
the human master. The novel deals with the boundaries of scientific
research. It is also a satire on the predatory and barbarian nature of the
capitalist society.
The Invisible Man
The imaginative novel tells the story of a student of science named by
Griffin. He tries to discover an element to make the cells of his boy
transparent and hence becomes invisible to others. He finally succeeds after
overcoming many difficulties. Yet instead of using his remarkable discovery
for the benefit of the people, he wants to exert power as a “superman” on
the whole society. He terrorizes many villages and degenerates into a
horrific murderer. The invisible man is defeated and killed at last.
Both The Island of Dr. Moreau and The Invisible Man owe an
obvious debt to Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, an earlier gothic and scientific
novel. These novels are based on one of the eternal themes of mankind and
one of the perennial themes of
Science Fiction. It explores the nature of
man by asking whether man can transgress the nature. In the novel Wells
shows his pessimistic attitude toward the effects of modern science on man.
The modern technology assumed to bring happiness to man can turns out to be
harmful if people cannot use it in a proper way. This ambivalence about
technology and scientific progress has remained a central part of our
culture especially in the future.
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