It’s the story of the Time Traveller – we don’t learn his name – told by a friend of his. The Time Traveller invents a time machine and travels forward many millennia into Earth’s future.
This is a surprisingly short book and one rather thin on, well, everything – plot, exposition, characters...
It started well, with an interesting discussion on the meaning of time that reminded me of Bergson’s Creative Evolution. The dinner party setting was good fun and later on the Traveller’s own explanation of time travel was well done. However, his relationship with the Eloi girl Weena left me feeling decidedly uncomfortable and his blythely leading her to her death was irresponsible and possibly immoral.
The devolution of the human race was never properly explained. Why would humanity split in two in such a way? Why are the underground-dwelling Morlocks immediately assumed to be evil? Why would they hide his time machine? There’s also a very disturbing implication that the worker-humans (who eventually become the Morlocks) of the Time Traveller’s imagined future are inferior to the rich, refined humans how end up as Eloi.
In short, too many questions were left unanswered for me to really enjoy this book. The title was downloaded for free from Amazon via @FreebooksUK.
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