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

Elvis: The Final Years - Jerry Hopkins

 ELVIS: THE FINAL YEARS - JERRY HOPKINS

Hey, buddy, the Elvis I knew was no junky. No, he was way beyond that. Being addicted to amphetamines and barbiturates was as nothing compared to his addiction to spending and giving money away. Wandering into Hollywood and Beverley Hills on an evening to spend $38,000 on guns and $80,000 on cars for Christmas gifts, handing over $500 bills to total strangers and wishing them merry Christmas, renting movie theatres and amusement parks at night after they were closed to the public, shooting at countless television sets with his derringer without a second thought, ordering his chauffeur to drive through the gates to his Graceland estate when they weren't opened promptly enough for him, giving away millions of dollars in cars, rings, houses and airplanes - all was as nothing to him.

"Lookit, goddammit," he would say "It's my fuckin' money and I can do whatever in goddamn hell I want with it."

I know the considered opinion is that Elvis was at his height during the 1950s and essentially before he went into the Army but I would argue that it was in the 1970s that he was at his greatest. This was the period when Elvis truly was the Emperor King, the time during which he bought and gave away more cars, took more drugs, hired more bodyguards, sang more songs, entertained more girls, and collected more awards than anyone.

"Before Elvis there wasn't anyone," Lennon once said, affirming Elvis's place at the top of the rock'n'roll hierarchy and acknowledging that without Elvis there would have been no Beatles. Ever the gentleman, Elvis accepted such patronage gracefully even when he sometimes didn't see eye to eye with those it was coming from.

Elvis met the Beatles, of course, or rather the Beatles met him though he always made public his disapproval of their drug taking and quietly disapproved of their long hair and their social stance. Elvis may well have been the figurehead of teenage rebellion in his early days but later on in his career it was no longer the image he wanted to be associated with. He had no desire to offend anyone nor to be associated with anyone who might cause offence to anyone. The image he wished to portray of himself was that of being a good, Christian boy with no specific social or political stance and of course that's what he was even when counting Richard Nixon as a friend and being a fervent supporter of the police. Hence his distancing himself from the Beatles even though they actually had much in common. Drugs, for example. The difference being that Elvis didn't consider the barbiturates, amphetamines and diet pills he took to actually be drugs even though his use of them was kept secret. He regarded them as medicine.  

Elvis: The Final Years by Jerry Hopkins is an exceptional book telling the story of Elvis Presley's lurid, decadent and exceptional life from between 1970 and 1977. It gets right into the nooks and crannies of his life at Graceland, backstage at his concerts, the divorce from Priscilla, the aftershow motel rooms, his antics, his habits and his obsessions. At the same time it knows where to show discretion and where to draw a veil over things which means it's not going for sensationalism alone. Whilst not shying away from the pill popping, the inadequacies, the madness and the sadness it displays decorum when cruelty towards its subject could easily have been pursued. It shows respect.

Hopkins charts the slow and steady decline along with the near tragic loneliness of what was one of the most famous people in the world. Elvis was taking morphine for pain, Quaaludes to sleep and amphetamines to diet. He was bingeing on junk food and by 1975 was spending and giving away more than he was earning, not helped by all his hangers-on and payrolled entourage who may well have loved him but who also knew that he was their cash cow whom they would milk until the cows came home.

Without any question, Elvis was a genuinely lovely man whose generosity knew no bounds. As his hired hands would all attest, he wore his heart on his sleeve and openly bore his scars, those being the death of his twin brother at birth, the death of his mother, the divorce with Priscilla and then finally just weeks before his death the publication of a book by some of his ex-bodyguards exposing his private life and the problems he wrestled with, particularly in regard to his use of chemicals. Elvis's biggest problems, however, were not his inner demons but the outer ones magnified ten-fold by the machinations of the music business. 

Come the end, it was these outer demons that did for him. The exploiters, the freeloaders, the manipulators, the bloodsuckers, the usurers, the gravy train riders, the hangers-on, the ambulance chasers, and the starfuckers. 

Come the end, in July of 1977 at the age of just 42 years old, riding a cocktail of pills and a bellyful of hamburgers Elvis passed out in the palatial bathroom of Gracelands, never to re-awaken.

For the very last and final time, Elvis had left the building.

John Serpico

Under Exmouth skies (Part 54)

 UNDER EXMOUTH SKIES (Part 54)

Horses, horses, horses, horses....