Step inside The Time Machine

The film without the cuts. And the book itself.

Science opens the door; the future refuses to be mastered.

9:41

The Cast

The Time Traveller

Main

A dust-covered inventor stands in a dinner-room doorway, limping in torn socks as if the future has followed him home.

Locations

Richmond Drawing-Room / Smoking-Room

room

A warm room of cigars and clever doubt becomes the place where the future asks to be believed.

Passage

What if time is not separate from space, but the dimension trapping us?

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The Author’s Pen

The Fourth Dimension

Filby became pensive. “Clearly,” the Time Traveller proceeded, “any real body must have extension in _four_ directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and—Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives.”

Reading

The Time Traveller is trying to knock down a distinction his guests take for granted: that space is one kind of thing and time another. His claim is that we only think time is different because of a quirk in how we experience it. We move along it steadily in one direction, from birth to death, unable to stop or turn back, and that steady drift fools us into treating it as separate from length and width. Filby, going quiet, is the audience standing in for the reader, sensing where this is headed.

World Index

The Plot

The Time Traveller demonstrates his theory - and vanishesThe year 802,701 - the Eloi are beautiful and helpless - the machine is goneThe Morlock trap - fire in the forest - Weena lost - the machine recoveredThe Time Traveller departs again - and never comes back

The Cast

The Time TravellerThe NarratorWeenaThe EloiThe MorlocksThe PsychologistThe Medical ManFilbyThe EditorThe Very Young ManThe Provincial MayorThe JournalistThe Silent ManMrs. Watchett

Locations

Richmond Drawing-Room / Smoking-RoomThe Dark ForestThe Eloi Great Halls / Surface RuinsThe Far-Future ShoreThe LaboratoryThe Lawn before the White SphinxThe Morlock UnderworldThe Palace of Green PorcelainThe RiverThe WellsThe White Sphinx

Objects of Note

MatchesThe Bronze Doors of the White SphinxThe Camera and KnapsackThe Iron Bar / MaceThe LeversThe Meat in the UnderworldThe Model Time MachineThe Time MachineWeena's Flowers

Core Concepts

Beauty conceals dependence, fear, and hungerClass division hardens into biological divisionDarkness carries the memory of hidden labor and fearExplanation is powerful, but the world keeps correcting itHumanity is not the measure of the universeKnowledge decays when no one can use or renew itProgress without moral growth becomes degenerationTenderness survives where civilization failsTime as a dimension turns thought into irreversible passage

The Author's Pen

The Model Time Machine VanishesThe Time Machine ItselfHis Haggard ReturnNo Interruptions Is It AgreedThe Sensations of Time TravellingThe White Marble FigureA Flow of DisappointmentThe Time Machine Was GoneRescue In The ShallowsThe Lesson of FearGhosts on the HillThe Industrial System PerfectedClambering Into The BlacknessThe Matchlight and the White CreaturesThe Old Order ReversedWeena Beside the CattleThe Ruined PalaceMatches Against the MorlocksThe Fire Coming After MeAlone Among the AshesThe End of the CattleTrapped With the Time MachineThe Red Motionless SunThe Flowers and the DreamThe Time Machine Had Gone

Plot point 01

The Time Traveller demonstrates his theory - and vanishes

A scientist shows his dinner guests a model that disappears into time - then a week later returns to the table injured, wild-eyed, and full of an impossible story.

Objects of Note

The Time Machine

The machine that carries its maker into the far future becomes the thing that strands him there.

The Cast

The Narrator

Main

A dinner guest watches the empty laboratory where a vanished man has left only doubt, flowers, and disturbed ordinary time.

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The Time Machine

H. G. Wells

The cast, locations, objects of note, core concepts, and selected passages in the Author’s Pen - at your own pace.

One of 127 classics in the Literah library

The Time Machine World, as it plays on your phone

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