17 - Time Machine (Version 7) by H. G. Wells

Step into the thrilling world of a Victorian scientist who believes he has unlocked the secrets of time travel. As he journeys to the distant future, he discovers humanity has diverged into two very different races the Eloi, delicate and carefree beings living above ground, and the Morlocks, sinister underground dwellers who once served the Eloi but now prey on their innocence. Will he uncover the truth behind this strange new world? Join us for a captivating exploration of evolution and survival. - Summary by Cliff Stone

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter seventeen of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by
Cliffstone of Sydney, Australia, Chapter seventeen, epilogue. One cannot choose,
but wonder will he ever return? It may be that

(00:22):
he swept back into the past and fell among the
blood drinking, hairy savages of the age of unpolished stone,
into the abysses of the Cretaceous Sea, or among the
grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times.
He may even, now, if I may use the phrase,
be wandering on some plesiosaurus haunted olytic coral reef, or

(00:45):
beside the lonely saline seas of the Triassic Age. Or
did he go forward into one of the nearer ages,
in which men are still men, but with the riddles
of our own time answered and its wearisome problem solved,
into the manhood of the race. For I, for my
own part, cannot think that these latter days of weak experiment,

(01:08):
fragmentary theory, and mutual discord are indeed man's culminating time.
I say, for my own part, he I know, for
the question had been discussed among us long before the
time Machine was made, thought but cheerlessly of the advancement
of mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization

(01:29):
only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon
and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so,
it remains for us to live as though it were
not so. But to me the future is still black
and blank, is a vast ignorance, lit at a few
casual places by the memory of his story. And I

(01:49):
have by me for my comfort two strange white flowers,
shriveled now and brown and flat and brittle, to witness
that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and
a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.
End of the Time Machine by H. G. Wells. Thank

(02:11):
you for listening.