The Time Machine

Any discourse on science fictions will remain broadly unaccomplished if there is no reference to Herbert George Wells or H. G. Wells (1866—1946). He was one of the leading English authors of the Victorian era and is still remembered worldwide for his fabulous fictional works. The Time Machine is the book that made him instantly famous to readers of the entire world and it is regarded as a literary classic till today.  In The Time Machine H. G. Wells characterized an English scientist (also referred to as a "time traveller" in the book) who invented a vehicle which, according to his description in the novel, would make time travel a real phenomenon, not just an imaginary thing. We find him in the novel talking about the theory of time travel and different features of his exceptional transport to a group of audiences.

The scientist travels back and forth through time by millions of years and finds bizarre, unfamiliar landscapes and creatures during his time travel. At a certain point of his tours, he stopped in the year 802,701 AD, in remote future. He landed in a recluse world with a lot of woodlands but he didn't find any mark of civilization in any part of that place. He was surprised because he had earlier thought humans would have reached the cliff of progress and technologies in future centuries. He even didn't find any human being initially on that strange land. After a while he came across some human-like creatures called "Elois". But they looked much smaller than general human beings and more shockingly the time traveller discovered that, the Elois did not have the intellect and strength humans are known to possess. The Elois were a timid sort of species and very low in physical power. The time traveller makes friends with an Eloi girl named Weena. Weena gave him fruits to eat and told him about their horrible lives imperilled by frequent assaults from a group of ape-like creatures called Morlocks. The Morlocks were the most powerful species on that landscape and they lived inside underground caves. However, they often came out of their caves at night on to the ground to hunt Elois for food. The gruesome details of the Morlocks and the way they killed Elois to eat them aggrieved and horrified the scientist. In one of the attacks by the Morlocks, the scientist saved Weena from getting killed.

The scientist found that the Morlocks were afraid of fire. So, he taught the Elois how to ignite fire as a defence against the Morlocks. In the meantime the Morlocks figured out that the scientist was their enemy and they also came to understand the power of his transport, the Time Machine. The Morlocks one night stole the machine and took it down into the caves where they lived. In a desperate effort, the time traveller succeeded to get hold of his Time Machine. While running away from the hideouts of the Morlocks, the scientist set fire on the woods to trap the Morlocks. A lot of Morlocks got killed in that fire. Unfortunately, Weena also died as the fire broke out all over the landscape. The scientist set the forest ablaze to destroy the Morlocks so that the Elois, the humanoid creatures of that land, can live without the panic caused by the Morlocks. The scientist wanted the human-like creatures to transfigure and upgrade themselves into real humans restoring the human-specific thinking power, wisdom and intellectual superiority.

The reviewer is Senior Lecturer, Department of English, Metropolitan University, Sylhet.