History Literature / TheTimeMachine

'''''[[http://pd.sparknotes.com/lit/timemachine/ The Time Machine]]''''' is a classic tale of TimeTravel, and one of the first to use a scientific mechanism to achieve it (Wells' own ''The Chronic Argonauts'' was years earlier). Where his predecessors had used [[AllJustADream visions]] to achieve the time travel, and only sent their protagonists TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, Creator/HGWells had his protagonist invent an actual time machine and travel into the far future.

** Many other fiction given the time traveller different names.

The story's vision of the future reflects Wells's [[WriterOnBoard strong]] [[UsefulNotes/PoliticalIdeologies socialist]] [[AuthorTract beliefs]]. There also has been an authorized sequel by Stephen Baxter released, called [[Literature/TheTimeShips The Time Ships]].It has been filmed twice ([[Film/TheTimeMachine1960 1960]] and [[Film/TheTimeMachine2002 2002]]), and there are many references to it in subsequent TimeTravel stories.

The story's vision of the future reflects Wells's [[WriterOnBoard strong]] [[UsefulNotes/PoliticalIdeologies socialist]] [[AuthorTract beliefs]]. There has been an authorized sequel by Stephen Baxter called [[Literature/TheTimeShips The Time Ships]].It has been filmed twice ([[Film/TheTimeMachine1960 1960]] and [[Film/TheTimeMachine2002 2002]]), and there are many references to it in subsequent TimeTravel stories.

The story's vision of the future reflects Wells's [[WriterOnBoard strong]] [[UsefulNotes/PoliticalIdeologies socialist]] [[AuthorTract beliefs]]. There has been an authorized sequel by Stephen Baxter called [[literature/TheTimeShips The Time Ships]].It has been filmed twice ([[Film/TheTimeMachine1960 1960]] and [[Film/TheTimeMachine2002 2002]]), and there are many references to it in subsequent TimeTravel stories.

The story's vision of the future reflects Wells's [[WriterOnBoard strong]] [[UsefulNotes/PoliticalIdeologies socialist]] [[AuthorTract beliefs]]. It has been filmed twice ([[Film/TheTimeMachine1960 1960]] and [[Film/TheTimeMachine2002 2002]]), and there are many references to it in subsequent TimeTravel stories.

** Addressed in Stephen Baxter's officially licensed sequel novel, "The Time Ships", which posits the theory that the Sun going Red Giant ''billions'' of years ahead of schedule, was due to accidental tampering done before the Human race devolved into the Eloi and Morlocks.

* PopculturalOsmosis: Subsequent fictional time travelers such as [[Film/BackToTheFuture Doc Brown]], [[Series/DoctorWho The Doctor]] and [[BillAndTedsExcellentAdventure Bill and Ted]] are usually better remembered than this guy. Having ''names'' probably helps.
* ScavengerWorld

* TheyCalledMeMad (several of the main character's colleagues scoff at his theories about time travel, which, of course, turn out to be true)

''[[http://pd.sparknotes.com/lit/timemachine/ The Time Machine]]'' is a classic tale of TimeTravel, and one of the first to use a scientific mechanism to achieve it (Wells' own ''The Chronic Argonauts'' was years earlier). Where his predecessors had used [[AllJustADream visions]] to achieve the time travel, and only sent their protagonists TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, Creator/HGWells had his protagonist invent an actual time machine and travel into the far future.

* ExecutiveMeddling - The author was forced to write and include an extra chapter, entitled [[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Grey_Man "The Grey Man"]] to lengthen the story. This chapter is generally not included in modern publications of the story.
** In an even more extreme example, a whole chapter titled "The Golden Age of Science", depicting a cold war in a technologically advanced future (and possibly the beginning of the Eloi-Morlock genesis) was written in the Great Illustrated Classics version; in a vain attempt to try to bring something, ''anything'' back from the future, the Time Traveler makes one last stop 200 years ahead of his home time, in a setting that he considered the Golden Age of Science.

* ScienceMarchesOn: The Time Traveller witnesses the Sun enter the Red Giant phase in only a few ''million'' years.

* ElvesVsDwarves: The Eloi and the Morlocks, of course.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical: Discussed in-universe, as the time traveller explains that his theory of the Eloi and the Morlocks might as well be just a result of his seeing everything from a political point of view. However, he calls it the most plausible one.

* ChasteHero: The hero saves and bonds with Weena a member of the obviously quite promiscuous Eloi race and she follows him around. He finds her attractive and charming, but, as he says when narrating his story, "I didn't come her to find a wife" and that's it. He sleeps with her, completely innocently. He is not even sure if she is male or female.

After a succession of adventures, the time traveller returns to his machine, takes a short trip ToTheFutureAndBeyond when the sun itself is dying then returns to the present day, where he tells his story. A few days later, he sets off again, and never returns.

* BeneathTheEarth (The Morlocks)
* ChasteHero: The hero saves and bonds with Weena a member of the obviously quite promiscous Eloi race and she follows him around. He finds her attractive and charming, but, as he says when narrating his story, "I didn't come her to find a wife" and that's it. He sleeps with her, completely innocently. He is not even sure if she is male or female.

* GentlemanAdventurer (the main character)

* IWantMyJetpack: Probably the UrExample of the trope. Time Traveler arrives in the distant year 802701, expecting to see all those marvelous achievements of mankind, and what does he find? A [[ScavengerWorld scavenger world]] inhabited by tiny childish people who think he fell from the sun.

* ScienceMarchesOn: The Time Traveller witnesseses the Sun enter the Red Giant phase in only a few ''million'' years.

* VictorianLondon (ThePresentDay for the main character in the book and maintained as such in most adaptations; the 2002 film [[CulturalTranslation moved the setting to New York]], but kept the same time period)

* WeirdSun: travelling millions of years into the future, Time Traveler notices the sun growing larger and more red, as well as slowing down on its way across the horizon, until finally setting still forever. He concludes that the Earth must have ceased to spin around its axis.

'''This book provides examples of:'''

The story's vision of the future reflects Wells's [[WriterOnBoard strong]] [[UsefulNotes/PoliticalIdeologies socialist]] [[AuthorTract beliefs]]. It has been filmed twice (''Film/TheTimeMachine1960'' and ''Film/TheTimeMachine2002''), and there are many references to it in subsequent TimeTravel stories.

''[[http://pd.sparknotes.com/lit/timemachine/ The Time Machine]]'' is a classic tale of TimeTravel, and the first to use a scientific mechanism to achieve it. Where his predecessors had used [[AllJustADream visions]] to achieve the time travel, and only sent their protagonists TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, Creator/HGWells had his protagonist invent an actual time machine and travel into the far future.

** In an even more extreme example, a whole chapter titled "The Golden Age of Science", depicting a cold war in a technologically advanced future (and possibly the beginning of the Eloi-Morlock genesis) was written in in the Great Illustrated Classics version.

* PopculturalOsmosis (Subsequent fictional time travelers such as [[Film/BackToTheFuture Doc Brown]], [[Series/DoctorWho The Doctor]] and [[BillAndTedsExcellentAdventure Bill and Ted]] are usually better remembered than this guy.)

*** This troper can attest to that: I own a copy of that Great Illustrated Classics book; in a vain attempt to try to bring something, ''anything'' back from the future, the Time Traveler makes one last stop 200 years ahead of his home time, in a setting that he considered the Golden Age of Science.

The story's vision of the future reflects Wells's [[WriterOnBoard strong]] [[UsefulNotes/PoliticalIdeologies socialist]] [[AuthorTract beliefs]]. It has been filmed twice, and there are many references to it in subsequent TimeTravel stories.

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:The Book]]

[[/folder]]

----
'''Tropes from the 1960 film version which weren't in the book:'''

[[folder:1960 Movie]]
* ApocalypticLog: The "talking rings", which dictate news broadcasts when spun upon a dais. The two heard in the film relay information about a war, and the separation of the Eloi and the Morlocks to the Time Traveler.
* BrownNote: The Air-Raid Sirens. Over 800,000 years, the Eloi have been subconsciously conditioned to react to the noise by seeking refuge underground. So much so that they will blindly walk into the Morlock's lair in an hypnotic trance.
* ColdWar: The film is very much a product of its time.
* CompletelyMissingThePoint: The Eloi. Particularly when the Time Traveller tries to explain to them that when the Sirens blare, they're actually marching off to their deaths, seeking refuge from a war that has been over for ''thousands'' of years!
--> '''Eloi''': But it's "All Clear!"
* CompositeCharacter: In the book, the Time Traveller has a group of friends he tells about the Time Machine, including the unnamed narrator and a young man named Philby. In the film, there's just Filby.
* ConvectionSchmonvection: after London gets nuked in 1966, everything around catches on fire, except for the protagonist of course. Oh, and the grass he's standing on.
* EternalEnglish: In the book the Eloi had their own language which The Time Traveler didn't understand, here they speak English ''over 800,000 years'' later. Presumably the talking rings have something to do with this.
* TheGreatPoliticsMessUp:
-->'''Talking ring:''' The war between East and West, which is now in its three hundred and twenty sixth year...
* HeyItsThatVoice: Paul Frees has had multiple voice acting roles and is recognizable as the voice of the [[ApocalypticLog "talking rings"]]. You can also recognize Alan Young's legendary Scottish brogue in Filby (he's the voice of Scrooge [=McDuck=] in both Mickey's Christmas Carol, and WesternAnimation/DuckTales.
* IdenticalGrandson: Filby's son is likewise played by Alan Young, minus the moustache and Scottish accent. The Time Traveller naturally mistakes him for his father during his jaunt 20 years into the future.
* LiteraryAgentHypothesis: Though the Time Traveler is referred to as "George", the machine's date indicator plate clearly reads "Manufactured by H. George Wells" meaning the Time Traveller's actual name is... Creator/HGWells.
* NamedByTheAdaptation: The Time Traveller is a addressed as "George", and his full name is visible on a plaque on the machine.
* NextSundayAD: The Time Traveler witnesses a nuclear holocaust... ''in 1966''. This could even border on TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, with 1966 London full of skyscrapers and having shiny monorail, not to mention "tubeless TV" on window display.
* NoNewFashionsInTheFuture: The Eloi women love their '50s hair. Weena, whose attitude and interests are akin to a child, even calls attention to it by asking George how the women of his time wear their hair.
* NubileSavage: Weena.
* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: Time Traveler goes forward in time at the speed of thousands of years every second, yet he can still see the wall behind him being built, block by block. Travelling this fast, he should barely be able to see any building ''last'', considering the lifespan of most structures mankind built.
* StrandedWithEdison: Implied by the ending. When Wells leaves after telling his friend Filby about his adventures, he takes three books from his vast library. Filby asks the housekeeper (and the audience), "If you were going to start civilization over again, which three books would you choose?"
* TrainingThePeacefulVillagers
* UncannyFamilyResemblance: George mistakes Filby's son for his father.
* UndyingLoyalty: Filby, executor of George's state, firmly refuses to sell the house and has it shut even after his death, believing the traveller would return some day.
* {{Weenalized}}[=/=]PromotedToLoveInterest: Former TropeNamer, by way of both the 2002 film and this one. In the novel, the time traveler forms a bond with an Eloi woman named Weena, who, like all Eloi, is a child-sized androgynous-looking creature mentally on the level of an eight-year old. However, the film turns Weena into a love interest, looking human.
[[/folder]]

----
'''Tropes from the 2002 film version which weren't in the book:'''

[[folder:2002 Movie]]
* AdaptationExpansion: Our hero now has a BackStory in which he invents the time machine in order to go back and prevent his fiancée's untimely death.
* {{Americanitis}}: The film moves the setting from London to New York.
* AndIMustScream: The Uber-Morlock ends up hanging onto the Time Machine but outside the bubble; he's forced to basically age to death ''in normal time'', unable to either let go of the machine or stop the process.
* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy: An explosion on the Moon rains debris upon the Earth and leaves the Moon itself split into two large broken halves and a cloud of smaller rocks over a period of almost a million years, rather than either gravitationally attracting each other back into a single body or spreading themselves out into a ring system as they actually would have over that long an interval.
* AwesomeAnachronisticApparel: When the doctor stops in the (relatively) near future, a girl passing by admires his "retro" outfit.
* BareYourMidriff: Mara's outfit.
* BrainCriticalMass: The far future villain has a massive brain that extends down his back. He uses it to control the beasts that prey on the humans.
* SpellMyNameWithAThe: The Uber-Morlock's real name is apparently Jeremy Morlock. Heh.
* ChekhovsGun: Hartdegen reaching out of the time bubble to catch his dropped pendant [[spoiler:and his hand rapidly aging while outside the bubble's protection]].
* DisposableWoman: The time-traveler's fiancée; he spent ''years'' building the time machine to change history and save her from dying. Two failed attempts are depicted, and then later we're told he tried to save her ''twenty-seven times''. She really does have no further character development than being destined to die.
* EternalEnglish: This time, they have their own language, but they still speak "the Stone Language" found on pieces of ruins of U.S. buildings. And the AI librarian (see WhoWantsToLiveForever below) likely fills the same role in maintaining early 21st-century American English pronunciation as the talking rings did in the 1960 film.
* EvilAlbino
* EvilOverlooker: [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/6f/Time_machine.jpg/220px-Time_machine.jpg The poster.]]
* {{Fictionary}}: The Eloi have their own language that, oddly, sounds rather limited. The word tamquen seems to have several different connotations, as it's used several times in rapid succession at one point.
* FridgeHorror: Vox spent thousands of years alone in the underground ruins completely alone, save for one Eloi who managed to escape the Morlocks. We then see that the Eloi died of old age and until Alex showed up, Vox was probably going to spend eternity in the same room as his only friend's corpse, all the while unable to bury him.
* FridgeLogic: If the Morlocks can no longer go in the sunlight, how come the raiding party took place in the middle of the day? The only explanation is that the Uber-Morlocks as albinos aren't capable of returning to the surface and they're keeping the other castes underground ''on purpose''.
* HeyItsThatGuy: [[MadTv Orlando Jones]] plays the futuristic library's A.I. system.
** And Alan Young, the original Filby, as the flower-shop salesman. Apparently he even found the Victorian-style collar he wore in the 1960 version!
* IChooseToStay
* {{Irony}}: Because Alexander created the machine for the purpose of saving his fiancee, that's the one thing that he can't use it to do.
* LargeHam: See below -- OneSceneWonder
* LostInImitation: This film seems to really be a rather loose [[TheRemake remake]] of the 1960 film, which itself was a somewhat loose adapation of Wells's novel, so you can imagine how little it resembles the book in any way.
** The film ''was'' directed by a direct descendant of HG Wells - great-grandson Simon Wells - so that could mitigate any dissonance in the adaptation.
* MyBrainIsBig: The Uber-Morlock -- rather than have the usual huge head, his brain extended down the neck and lower back.
* NamedByTheAdaptation: Alexander Hartdegen, the time traveller.
* TheLostLenore: The protagonist is now entirely motivated by the loss of his love, Emma.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Some fans have [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation questioned]] whether Alexander killing the Uber-Morlock, thus leaving the more feral Morlock without a leader, in fact is what brought on the apocalypse that Alexander saw in the even more far-future.
* OneSceneWonder: As with ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact'', the Morlocks were given a leader that had not existed previously, in order to explain what was going on those unfamiliar with the source material. Played [[HamAndCheese with a side of cheese]] by JeremyIrons.
* PerfectPacifistPeople: Arguably, the Eloi are these, though {{Deconstructed}} since it makes them easy preys for the Morlocks.
** The 1960 version had an anti-war sentiment that was lost in this version, shown when an Eloi male says "It is all clear," a phrase he'd learned from the Talking Rings. In THIS version, however, the Eloi are pacifists because of the Uber-morlock's "psychic filter," which makes them forget about their dead and keeps them pacifistic. (Warning: this may have gotten lost in the cutting-room.)
** It's also mentioned that any Eloi who fights back simply are the one the Morlocks come for ''first''. Which is part of why the Eloi have been beaten down into submission and completely refuse to fight back.
* PsychicDreamsForEveryone: Literally. Though, as it turns out, it's a side effect of the aforementioned [[LaserGuidedAmnesia psychic filter]].
* RagnarokProofing: Averted with the planet in general. After the moon disaster, any traces of civilization were pretty much obliterated over millions of years. Inexplicably played straight with the photonic library computer. His main processing unit survives orbital bombardment, the resulting millions of years of neglect, and somehow end up ''underground'' on top of that. He even still has numerous functioning projection screens.
* RecursiveCanon: Alex is offered a copy of HG Wells's "The Time Machine" in the future library.
* RidiculouslyHumanRobots: The photonic library computer. The computer even gets visibly irritated at what he regards as stupid questions from the Time Traveller, when a real computer would simply and happily attempt to answer any of his inquiries regardless of what was asked. This means that for whatever reason creators gave him the same flaws as a human librarian would have, even though there was no reason for it and would actually hinder his performance as a library computer.
** On the other hand, Vox is described in the commentary as effectively being an Internet Search Engine with a Personality. Now imagine if you were a sentient compendium of all human knowledge, whose entire reason for existence was to be asked the ''same'' inane questions by people, ''over and over again?'' Can you really blame Vox for having developed into a passive-aggressive DeadpanSnarker to cope with the monotony?
* RippleEffectProofMemory
* ScienceIsBad: "We went too far."
** The irony is that Alexander has drawings in his lab that perfectly mirror the 2030's New York. Despite the fact that Alexander is a visionary, it was ultimately men like him that doomed the world.
* SlobsVersusSnobs: Morlocks and Eloi.
* SpinningClockHands: The first sign Professor Hartdegen is travelling into the past is when the hands on his collection of pocket watches slow down, then reverse, speeding up as he travels further back.
* TemporalParadox
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Given to the hero by the ''villain'' of all people.
--> '''Alexander''': This is a perversion of every natural law!
--> '''Uber-Morlock''': [[ArmourPiercingQuestion And what is time travel?]] But your pathetic attempt to control the entire world around '''you'''!
* TimeIsDangerous: The titular device creates a spherical bubble to protect the occupant. Reach outside, that protection no long applies. The main character hurts his hand when he instinctively grabs at an item he dropped. A Morlock wrestling with him on the machine ends up hanging outside the bubble, aging into dust. Logically, any attempt to reach outside the bubble should have violently scattered their atoms across dozens of years of history, but the RapidAging looked cooler, presumably.
* TimeyWimeyBall: He can't go back and save his girlfriend because then he'd have no reason to go back and save her. Then at the end of the film he goes to a bad future, then goes back in time and prevents it which he can do because... ?
** He couldn't save his girlfriend because it would remove his reason for creating the time machine, but could stop that future from occurring because he was just observing it.
*** But remember that he wouldn't be able to observe it in the future if he prevented it from happening in the first place. The same effect, only the other way round.
**** Ah, but! Saving his fiancée in the past would be an action that affects his present. Observing one possible future where he is a temporal outsider, then going back a bit before that to change it is a different thing entirely. He can't change his past, but he can change the future. If his fiancée hadn't died, he wouldn't have built the time machine or used it like he did, so she would've died, so he would've saved her, so she would've died etcetera. Paradox. However, once he has access to the time machine he's free to travel to the future, see how it goes, then travel back and change it in whatever way he wishes so long as it doesn't affect anything that happened to him before he first turned on the time machine. Everything before he activated the time machine is immutable because if things were different, the time machine wouldn't have come to exist. Everything after that is free game because nothing in the future is essential to the creation and operation of the machine.
** Although FridgeHorror sets in when you realise that without the Uber-Morlock's influence, he states that the Morlocks would exhaust the food supply in a matter of months... which looks very much the Morlock-Future Alexander found himself in. And we know they have ''other'' colonies.
*** But then he fixed it all with a big time explosion. Time explosions are special; they can destroy all Morlock colonies simultaneously without affecting the geology enough to dislodge the precious Eloi towns precariously stuck to the sides of precipices. Time explosions are funny that way.
* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The Time Traveler stops off in the 2030s on his way to 802701.
* UndeathlyPallor: The Morlocks, though not undead, have become pale from living underground and fear the light.
* {{Weenalized}} (again)
* WhoWantsToLiveForever: The photonic library computer AI from 2030, who inexplicably manages to survive what is basically the apocalypse in an above-ground building which presumably has absolutely no protection from that sort of thing, and whose power and memory unit last literally hundreds of thousands of years. The fact that he remembers ''everything'' doesn't help. Leads to a bit of PetTheDog when he's given the opportunity to do the one thing he wants to do: teach.
* YouCantFightFate: Played straight and then possibly averted. The main character tries to save his girlfriend but every time, his girlfriend gets killed; the chief Morlock later explains that the time machine cannot change the past in a way that prevents it from being built in the first place. Later in the movie, he goes to a BadFuture where the Morlocks have wiped out the Eloi, and then he goes back in time and wipes out the Morlocks. Either this means he sucessfully averted that bad future, or in the intervening several million years, the Morlocks from other areas will invade and wipe out the Eloi.
* YoungFutureFamousPeople: Referenced. Hartdegen is in touch with a bright young man from a Swiss patent office, one Mr. [[UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein Einstein]].
[[/folder]]