The Time Machine

Widely regarded as the first great novel to imagine time travel, H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895) follows a Victorian inventor on an extraordinary journey far into the future—ultimately to the final moments of the earth itself. Traveling to the year A.D. 802,701, he discovers a seemingly peaceful society known as the Eloi, whose lives appear free from suffering and marked by beauty and harmony. But this idyllic vision proves deceptive. As he uncovers the Eloi’s unsettling relationship with the subterranean Morlocks, he is forced to confront a chilling revelation about the future of humanity—and the forces in his own age that may lead to it.