Synopses & Reviews
When a Victorian scientist propels himself into the year a.d. 802,701, he is initially delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment, and peace. Entranced at first by the Eloi, an elfin species descended from man, he soon realizes that these beautiful people are simply remnants of a once-great culture—now weak and childishly afraid of the dark. They have every reason to be afraid: in deep tunnels beneath their paradise lurks another race descended from humanity—the sinister Morlocks. And when the scientist’s time machine vanishes, it becomes clear he must search these tunnels if he is ever to return to his own era.
- Includes a newly established text, a full biographical essay on Wells, a list of further reading, and detailed notes
- Marina Warner’s introduction considers Wells’s development of the “scientific romance” and places the novel in the context of its time
Synopsis
Wells's genre-defining novel of time travel
When a Victorian scientist propels himself into the year a.d. 802,701, he is initially delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment, and peace. Entranced at first by the Eloi, an elfin species descended from man, he soon realizes that these beautiful people are simply remnants of a once-great culture now weak and childishly afraid of the dark. They have every reason to be afraid: in deep tunnels beneath their paradise lurks another race descended from humanity the sinister Morlocks. And when the scientist s time machine vanishes, it becomes clear he must search these tunnels if he is ever to return to his own era.
This edition includes a newly established text, a full biographical essay on Wells, a list of further reading, and detailed notes.Marina Warner s introduction considers Wells s development of the scientific romance and places the novel in the context of its time.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators."
Synopsis
'The father of science fiction' Guardian
The Time Machine is the first and greatest modern portrayal of time-travel. It sees a Victorian scientist propel himself into the year 802,701 AD, when he is initially delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment and peace. Entranced at first by the Eloi, an elfin species descended from humans, he soon realizes that they are simply remnants of a once-great culture - now weak and childishly afraid of the dark. They have every reason to be afraid: in deep tunnels beneath their paradise lurks another race - the sinister Morlocks.
Edited by PATRIC K PARRINDER with an Introduction by MARINA WARNER and notes by STEVEN MCLEAN
Synopsis
Together in one indispensable volume,
The Time Machine and
The Invisible Man are masterpieces of irony and imaginative vision from H. G. Wells, the father of science fiction.
The Time Machine conveys the Time Traveller into the distant future and an extraordinary world. There, stranded on a slowly dying Earth, he discovers two bizarre races: the effete Eloi and the subterranean Morlocksa haunting portrayal of Darwins evolutionary theory carried to a terrible conclusion.
The Invisible Man is the fascinating tale of a brash young scientist who, experimenting on himself, becomes invisible and then criminally insane, trapped in the terror of his own creation.
Convincing and unforgettably real, these two classics are consummate representations of the stories that defined science fictionand inspired generations of readers and writers.
With an Introduction by John Calvin Batchelor
and an Afterword by Paul Youngquist
About the Author
Herbert George Wells (18661946) was born in Bromley, Kent, England. His father was a professional cricketer and sometime shopkeeper, his mother a former ladys maid. Although Bertie” left school at fourteen to become a drapers apprentice (a life he detested), he later won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in London, where he studied with the famous Thomas Henry Huxley. He began to sell articles and short stories regularly in 1893. In 1895, his immediately successful novel
The Time Machine rescued him from a life of penury on a schoolteachers salary. His other scientific romances”
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896),
The Invisible Man (1897),
The War of the Worlds (1898),
The First Men in the Moon (1901), and
The War in the Air (1908)won him distinction as the father of science fiction. Henry James saw in Wells the most gifted writer of the age, but Wells, having coined the phrase the war that will end war” to describe World War I, became increasingly disillusioned and focused his attention on educating mankind with his bestselling
Outline of History (1920) and his later utopian works. Wells witnessed a world more terrible than any of his imaginative visions, and he bitterly observed: Reality has taken a leaf from my book and set itself to supercede me.”
John Calvin Batchelor is the acclaimed author of such imaginative novels as The American Falls, Peoples Republic of Antarctica, and Gordon Liddy Is My Muse.
Paul Youngquist is professor of English and associate chair of Graduate Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Hes the author of three books: Race, Romanticism, and The Atlantic; Madness and Blakes Myth (1991); and Monstrosities: Bodies and British Romanticism (2003), as well as numerous articles on a variety of subjects.