The Time Machine - H G Wells

 THE TIME MACHINE - H G WELLS 

The interesting thing about H G Wells' The Time Machine is that his vision of the future is based on a class analysis where the middle class are noticeable by their absence and the world is divided between the ruling and the working class, though Wells throws a spanner in the works by suggesting it might be the working class who are the actual rulers.

It's interesting also that when it comes to books and visions of the future it's always 1984 and Brave New World that are cited as the touchstones within that particular field whilst The Time Machine is studiously ignored. To make up for this perhaps, H G Wells is often cited as the father of science fiction alongside Jules Verne although the difference between the two is that whilst Verne was interested in the scientific mechanics of the future, Wells was more interested in the social impact of those same mechanics.

Narrated in the first person though employing a similar trope to Conrad's Heart Of Darkness where the first person narrative is conveyed by a third party, The Time Machine is the story of an un-named scientist known only as The Time Traveller who invents a machine that can traverse the Fourth Dimension. What this means is that he can travel through time and on his very first test flight is flung into the far future. He lands in a world or rather the world around him changes to one where mankind has effectively divided into almost two separate species.

Above ground live the Eloi who are child-like and simple, whose essential needs such as food and clothes are provided for, leaving them with nothing to do apart from play. They are possessed of very little intelligence, are physically weak, fey and enfeebled; and like children they have a fear of the dark.

Underground live the Morlocks who are simian-like, of bleached skin and with large eyes to enable them to see in the dark. They too are dim-witted though have a propensity for industrial labour as that is what they are conditioned to: To work and maintain the great engines that thud away under the earth for some unspecified and probably fruitless reason.

As The Time Traveller deduces: Over time the gradual widening of the social distance between the Capitalist and the Labourer had arrived at its logical conclusion and Industry and the less ornamental aspects of civilization had descended underground and out of sight. In the end this had left above ground the Haves, pursuing pleasure, comfort and beauty whilst below ground were the Have-nots, the workers continuously adapting to the conditions of their labour. Evolution had then naturally taken its toll resulting in the refined beauty and child-like demeanour of the Eloi and the pale, ugly pallor of the Morlocks.

Further to this, The Time Traveller deduces the Morlocks have an aversion to light and are only able to ascend above ground at night and only after the moon has waned. This was why the Eloi are afraid of the dark, because with the dark come the Morlocks. And then to cap it all, The Time Traveller discovers that whilst the Eloi feed only on fruit and nuts, the Morlocks are carnivores feeding only on meat. That meat being the meat of the Eloi. The Morlocks eat the Eloi - like cattle in the field.

On reading The Time Machine, I wondered if H G Wells might have been interested in eugenics and lo and behold with a quick google search there it is: Reports of how he was an enthusiastic supporter of it, hailing eugenics as the first step toward the removal of 'detrimental types and characteristics' and the 'fostering of desirable types' in their place.

I suspected as much. It's there between the lines of The Time Machine. It's there in the way the Morlocks - H G Wells' symbolic representation of the working class - are depicted as ugly and worthy only of being killed whilst the Eloi are cast as the good guys. It's there in H G Wells' very blatant anti-working class prejudice made palatable by the disguise of science fiction.

Who'd have thought it? You read a book because it's a classic of its genre and because you liked the film based upon it from 1960 starring Rod Taylor and you come away feeling a bit repulsed. Why has this not been highlighted before? That The Time Machine is an early advertisement for the art and science of the breeding of better men through the extermination of 'inferior' DNA? I wonder if Hitler ever read it? Or even Boris Johnson and certain other members of the public school-educated Conservative Party?

John Serpico

Morlock

Boris Johnson

The Island Of Doctor Moreau - H G Wells

THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU -

H G WELLS

Jung called it 'synchronicity', meaning the underlying connection between disparate people, events, objects and places. The pattern of coincidences. I was listening to an album called Search And Destroy: A Punk Lounge Experience by a Swedish singer called Sofia and on it was an ambient version of the song Mongoloid by Devo who were mentioned in a book I was reading at the time called New York Rocker by Blondie bassist Gary Valentine where he said the line "Are we not men?" by Devo is taken from the 1930s film of H G Wells' novel The Island Of Doctor Moreau.

The following week I was talking to Stacia Blake, who used to dance on stage with Hawkwind and she pointed me in the direction of a second-hand bookshop I'd never been to before. In that bookshop I found a whole load of Michael Moorcock books who was, of course, once very involved with Hawkwind himself. But whilst there I also found a copy of Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, and a copy of The Island Of Doctor Moreau by H G Wells which, naturally, I bought. It felt as if I should.

I take it everyone knows who H G Wells is and some of the books he wrote? The Invisible Man? War Of The Worlds? The Time Machine? A fair few of us may have seen the film versions of these works but how many of us have actually read any of the books? I for one have never done so, for sure. I acknowledge there's not enough time in the world to read everything that's ever been written, but H G Wells? He's a classic, world-famous writer. I thought then, that it was time to put this right and it seemed as if Jung's theory of synchronicity (along with Stacia, the nude dancer from Hawkwind) was coming into play to make this happen.

The first thing to do was obviously to check out the "Are we not men?" line and the connection to Devo. And well, well, well. Gary Valentine wasn't wrong. There it was:

'Not to go on all-Fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to eat Flesh nor Fish; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to claw Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not Men? Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?'

These lines are chanted-out by the Beast People, a tribe of crippled and grotesque animals who have been transformed into half-humans via the vivisection experiments of a scientist by the name of Doctor Moreau.

Cast out by his peer group in the scientific community of London due to his unethical methods, Moreau has set up camp on an isolated island in the Pacific where he is free to continue his pursuits without interference. Into the mix comes Edward Pendrick, a lone survivor of a shipwreck who, finding himself stranded on the island bears witness to the last days of Moreau's self-made, jungle kingdom.

Seeing as how The Island Of Doctor Moreau was first published in 1896, H G Wells was obviously years ahead of his time and for good reason is cited as 'a father of science-fiction'. The book entertains such themes as morality, man's relationship to animals, science, vivisection and - most importantly - the subject of pain in regard to man's perception of it applying to himself, other creatures and its role in the universe.

It's interesting to remember that Charles Darwin's The Origin Of Species had only been published just over thirty years earlier so the theory of evolution and natural selection was still relatively new when Wells wrote his book. The significance of this is shown in the way Wells looks at the link between animals and men purely through the prism of science, without bringing god and religion into the equation.

It's easy to see a lot of metaphors in The Island Of Doctor Moreau though whether they're intentional metaphors created deliberately by Wells is another question. Does Moreau symbolise God? Is Moreau's laboratory (referred to by the Beast People as 'The House Of Pain') a metaphor for the world? Is the whole book a critique of vivisection and a warning of what could happen if science is given free rein to do as it pleases?

There's a creeping feeling of sickness throughout the whole book and you realise once you've finished it that what you've just read isn't so much science fiction but a horror story. This then leads to an unspoken link between it and Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness (published three years later) that has that same creeping sickness feel about it. In Conrad's book, Kurtz (as played by Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, of course) like Moreau has also had free rein to create his own jungle kingdom; ending with Kurtz' dying words of 'The horror! The horror!'

Of the two, Conrad's is the better book but an underlying connection is there.

Swedish ambient Punk, Devo, Blondie, H G Wells, Hawkwind, Michael Moorcock, Joseph Conrad.

Synchronicity, in other words.

John Serpico