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Cover of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

The Time Machine

  • 120 pages · about 2 hours
  • First published 1895
  • 1,146 editions
  • Free to read

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1 About this book

The Time Traveller, a dreamer obsessed with traveling through time, builds himself a time machine and, much to his surprise, travels over 800,000 years into the future.

He lands in the year 802701: the world has been transformed by a society living in apparent harmony and bliss, but as the Traveler stays in the future he discovers a hidden barbaric and depraved subterranean class. Wells's transparent commentary on the capitalist society was an instant bestseller and launched the time-travel genre.

  • Classics
  • Science fiction
  • Dystopian fiction
  • Adventure
  • Comics & graphic novels, science fiction
  • Scientists
  • Space warfare
  • Time travel

2 What to expect

A short Victorian novella in which an inventor tells his dinner guests about his journey to the year 802,701, where humanity has split into two species. It is an adventure with a dark argument underneath, about class division and where progress might lead. The frame of a tale told after dinner keeps it brisk, and its picture of the far future is bleak and strange.

Good for readers who want: classic science fiction, time travel, and a short read with big ideas.

3 Read it free, right here

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4 About H. G. Wells

1866–1946

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer, prolific in many genres. He wrote more than forty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography, and autobiography.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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