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The Time Machine (Norton Critical Editions)

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The Time Machine by H. G. Wells is my favorite science fiction book of all time. I highly recommend it to anybody who likes the idea of time travel. I also recommend the movie with Guy Pearce, the newest of the two Time Machine movies. It is more realistic than the Rod Taylor version. I do not normally like remakes, but the remake is much better than the first (at least in my opinion, it is). This Norton Critical Edition of The Time Machine was released earlier this year (2009), and just in time for me to do my research paper on it for my college Science Fiction class.

Wells was very advanced in his use of science in fiction, and the critical essays here, including useful science articles both modern and contemporary to Wells, help frame his story. It's remarkable how well informed some of his ideas are, including degeneration, time as a fourth dimension, and the death of the universe by entropy - some of it was a bit off, but he was working with the limited science of the time. I was forced to revise some of my prejudices toward the scientific literacy of the period.

Wells' novel doesn't require the use of scholarly footnotes/annotations as much as other Nortons do, but the essays included here are very useful in understanding the context for such an important novel in science fiction and literature in general. Here's hoping Norton is able to do more scholarly editions of science fiction literature.

An unnamed time traveler sees the future of man (802,701 A.D.) and then the inevitable future of the world. He tells his tale in detail.

I grew up on the Rod Taylor /George Pal movie. When I started the book I expected it to be slightly different with a tad more complexity as with most book/movie relationships. I was surprised to find the reason for the breakup of species (Morlock and Eloi) was class Vs atomic (in later movie versions it was political). I could live with that but to find that some little pink thing replaced Yvette Mimieux was too munch.

After al the surprises we can look at the story as unique in its time, first published in 1895, yet the message is timeless. The writing and timing could not have been better. And the ending was certainly appropriate for the world that he describes. Possibly if the story were written today the species division would be based on eugenics.

The Time Machine Starring: Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux

Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human L