A review by bryforce
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

4.0

H.G. Wells’s 1895 first novel The Time Machine. Considered one of the first futurists, Wells astounds with his predictions for an imagined future Earth where the Eloi represent what will eventually happen to the upper classes or owners of capital who go soft (literally) and revert to some weird, flower-picking hippie’s wet dream after having overcome life’s struggles to the point where they’ve lost their intelligence, not having to hone it on adversity. Unfortunately, they have become fodder for the Morlocks, the evolutionary descendants of the working classes whose endless toil forced them further underground where they now feed (literally) on the Eloi above. Wells was an avowed proponent of socialism, and his vision for the future plays out creatively along such philosophical political lines. What I loved, though, is how vivid his descriptions of the actual machine moving through time (and the fantastic future landscapes) are--it’s like Kirby’s Moebius Chair moving through a Ditko Dr. Strange astral plane (with a little Steranko background thrown in). Wild stuff, this relatively short novel and the payoff of seeing the original source material for so many sci-fi homages/rip-offs to come is alone worth the price of your time.