The Time Machine
H.G. Wells · 1895
The novel that invented time travel as a narrative device. Wells used the far future, 802,701 AD, to argue about class: the Eloi (leisure class) and Morlocks (workers) are capitalism's logical endpoint. Still the genre's most efficient political metaphor.
The case against
Wells writes the Time Traveller as a lectern with legs; Weena, the one Eloi with a name, functions as a pet. The Eloi-Morlock allegory is a political cartoon stretched to book length, and the Victorian frame (gentlemen smoking, asking polite questions) creaks. Brilliant premise, dated machinery, nobody aboard to care about.
Science Fiction & Fantasy · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
