The following Thursday evening the narrator travels again to Richmond and the home of the Time Traveller. The men, unsurprisingly, are more than a little dubious of the scientist’s claims and leave for the night in varying senses of humour over the disappearing model and claims of the impending exploration of time. Is that plain? I was never more serious in my life.” One of the candles on the mantel was blown out, and the little machine suddenly swung round, became indistinct, was seen as a ghost for a second, perhaps, as an eddy of faintly glittering brass and ivory and it was gone – vanished!” After a small discussion the Time Traveller invites his guests to see the actual, full-sized, machine in his laboratory and states to the assembled group, “Upon that machine,” said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp aloft, “I intend to explore time. There was a breath of wind, and the lamp flame jumped.
I am absolutely certain there was no trickery. He then demonstrates it to the men, “We all saw the lever turn. Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing along the Time Dimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave.”Īs the conversation continues the Time Traveller then presents the men with a model – a metal framework containing ivory and crystal parts, the size of a small clock – which he proclaims to be his plan for a machine to travel through time. We are always getting away from the present moment. That is just where the whole world has gone wrong. One of the men states, “And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from the present moment.” To which the Time Traveller replies, “My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. The discussion is about things scientific and especially the dimension of time. The others are the narrator, who is never identified by name or profession the Psychologist, the Provincial Mayor, the Medical Man, the Very Young Man, and a man called Filby. The scientist himself is described as the Time Traveller. Most of those attending are described by their profession. The story starts with a weekly meeting of men over dinner in an unnamed scientist’s home. It is a short work, my edition being 81 pages in total, and takes very little time to read. This, to my embarrassment, is the very first of H.G.Wells’ works that I have read despite having seen many screen adaptations of his various stories since childhood. The Time Machine was first published in serial format in 1895 and was subsequently collated as a book.
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