Welcome back to First Contact Friday, the weekly series where I introduce you to science fiction works for the very first time and talk about it honestly.
This week: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, published in 1895. Yes, the one that basically invented the idea of a machine that takes you through time and space. The one that coined the term “time machine” in the first place. If you have never read it, you might be surprised how short, strange, and awesome it is.
What The Time Machine About
Most people know the general idea going in: a Victorian scientist builds a time machine, travels to the far future, and finds that humanity has changed dramatically. What you might not expect is how far into the future Wells sends his unnamed protagonist, referred to simply as the Time Traveller.
The year 802,701 AD.
By that point, the human species has split into two distinct groups. The Eloi that live above ground in crumbling palaces, eating fruit, playing in the sun, and doing absolutely nothing useful, and the Morlocks that live underground, tending to the machinery that keeps the Eloi fed and clothed, coming out only at night.
The twist, which Wells reveals slowly and with real dread: the Morlocks raise the Eloi the same way humans raise livestock. The upper class, in Wells’ grim vision, has become the food.
It is not a comfortable read. That is very much the point.
Why Wells Wrote It the Way He Did
To understand The Time Machine, you need to know a little about the world Wells was writing in. Victorian England was a society of sharp, brutal class divisions. Factory workers labored underground in terrible conditions while wealthy industrialists enjoyed the fruits of that labor above ground. Wells had seen this firsthand, having worked as a draper’s apprentice in a basement as a teenager.
Wells was also steeped in Darwin. His story takes evolutionary theory and runs it forward in the darkest possible direction. Rather than showing humanity becoming smarter and stronger over millennia, he shows the opposite: without pressure to survive, both species devolve. The Eloi lose their intellect. The Morlocks lose their humanity.
The two races were not accidental choices, either. The Morlocks were the underground workers, once subservient, who eventually prey on the feeble, defenseless Eloi for food, Wells’ vision of what unchecked capitalism might ultimately produce. I guess he wasn’t being very subtle.
The Story Is Compact
One thing that surprises a lot of first-time readers is just how compact The Time Machine is. At around 80 pages, it is a novella rather than a full novel, and it reads quickly. The whole thing is framed as a dinner party story: the Time Traveller gathers guests, tells them what happened to him, and the reader pieces together the world of 802,701 through his account.
That framing device does a lot of work. It keeps the story grounded. It creates a layer of skepticism, the dinner guests are not sure whether to believe him, that mirrors our own uncertainty as readers. And it gives Wells room to end the story on an ambiguous note that lands harder than a clean resolution would.
The Time Traveller departs again at the end of the book. Never to return.
What Makes It Worth Reading in 2026
Honestly? The book is about 130 years old, and it still feels relevant in its underlying message. Not because of the science, but because the anxieties Wells was writing about have not gone anywhere.
I’m no socialist by any stretch of the imagination, but I have eyes. Wealth concentration, the separation of labor from comfort, the assumption that technology automatically makes things better, these are not exclusively Victorian problems. They are very much alive right now.
Wells also wrote a genuinely good story on top of the social commentary. The scene where the Time Traveller realizes what the Morlocks actually are is properly horrifying. His friendship with Weena is unexpectedly moving. And the final jump to the dying Earth is one of the best pieces of cosmic horror written in the 19th century, even if nobody called it that at the time.
If you have been putting off reading The Time Machine because it feels like homework, stop. It takes a few hours, and it will stick with you for a lot longer than that.
BTOR Verdict
The Time Machine is not a comfortable book, and it was never meant to be. Wells described it as “another assault on human self-satisfaction,” written consciously under the influence of Jonathan Swift’s tradition of satirical critique. That comes through on every page.
The ideas feel sharper than the era would suggest. The ending lingers. And the fact that Wells invented an entire subgenre of science fiction almost as a side effect of writing a social critique is, frankly, remarkable. Please read it!
Rating: Essential reading. 8/10