This 19th century story of a scientist who constructs a time machine and travels 800,000+ years into the future holds up remarkably well. I suppose this is in part due to how far into a strange future the narrator takes us, but also due to Well's writing style, which picks and chooses details carefully, smoothly dropping the reader into the worlds he creates. ( )

We never learn much of the identity of the time traveller (op cit, it does have two 'L's in the book, is that a British spelling?), the beginning of the book refers to him as the time traveller. The story is told in a first-person narration. He is British, and he is male, probably in his prime. It is the classic story, a bit different from the movie versions. We meet the Morlocks, and Weena, strange creatures we encounter only briefly, and learn of man's fate.

The story is well told and moves quickly. He doesn't pause to build suspense, we can feel the urgency of the time traveller's actions.

H. G. Wells suggests man is his own demise, one has to wonder if he was making a political statement, but doesn't stress it as we would expect authors to do today. The book is around 260ish pages, but felt shorter as it reads pretty easily. It is in the public domain and available for free from Project Gutenberg. ( )

http://www.book-blog.com/2009/11/well... ( )

A great, almost haunting novel. Wells does not get nearly enough credit for The Time Machine. There is much more here than meets the eye. ( )

The Time Machine is a short novella detailing the journey of a man who found a way to travel along the 4th dimension. It's a story about the evolution of humankind. And a story about the end of time. But more than all of that with The Time Machine, H. G. Wells managed to redefine what a science fiction story is. The Time Machine is not a classic because of immaculate storytelling. The novel is uneven in pacing and style. It is a classic because the common ideas, themes, and mythos of time-travel and time machines originate within these pages, and have continued to influence and captivated ever since. ( )