March 6, 2025 • 15 mins
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells is a classic science fiction novel that follows an unnamed scientist, known as the Time Traveller, who invents a machine that allows him to travel through time. He journeys to the distant future, arriving in the year 802,701, where he encounters two distinct races: the gentle, childlike Eloi and the sinister, underground-dwelling Morlocks. As he explores this strange future, he realizes the dark implications of humanity’s evolution. The novel explores themes of class struggle, the passage of time, and the fate of civilization, making it one of the most influential works in science fiction history.
This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI
This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter twelve of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Time Machine,
Chapter twelve. So I came back for a long time.
I must have been insensible upon the machine. The blinking
(00:22):
succession of the days and nights was resumed. The sun
got golden again, the sky blue. I breathed with greater freedom.
The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and flowed. The
hand spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw
again the dim shadows of houses, the evidences of decadent humanity.
(00:45):
These too changed and passed, and others came presently. When
the million dial was at zero, I slackened speed. I
began to recognize our own petty and familiar architecture. The
thousand's hand ran back to the starting point. The day
and night flapped slower and slower. Then the old walls
(01:06):
of the laboratory came round me very gently. Now I
slowed the mechanism down. I saw one little thing that
seemed odd to me. I think I've told you that
when I set out before, my velocity became very high.
Missus Watchett had walked across the room, traveling as it
seemed to me like a rocket. As I returned, I
(01:30):
passed again across that minute when she traversed the laboratory,
but now her every motion appeared to be the exact
inversion of her previous ones. The door at the lower
end opened, and she glided quietly up the laboratory back foremost,
and disappeared behind the door by which she had previously entered.
(01:51):
Just before that, I seemed to see Hilia for a moment,
but he passed like a flash. Then I stopped the
machine and saw about me again the old, familiar laboratory,
my tools, my appliances, just as I had left them.
I got off the thing, very shaky, and sat down
(02:12):
upon my bench. For several minutes. I trembled violently. Then
I became calmer. Around me was my old workshop again,
exactly as it had been. I might have slept there
and the whole thing have been a dream, and yet
not exactly. The thing had started from the southeast corner
(02:34):
of the laboratory, it had come to rest again in
the northwest against the wall where you saw it. That
gives you the exact distance from my little lawn to
the pedestal of the white sphinx into which the Morlocks
had carried my machine. For a time my brain went stagnant.
Presently I got up and came through the passage here,
(02:56):
limping because my heel was still painful. Feeling sorely begrimed,
I saw the pall mall gazette on the table by
the door. I found the date was indeed to day,
and looking at the time piece, saw the hour was
almost eight o'clock. I heard your voices and the clatter
of plates. I hesitated. I felt so sick and weak.
(03:21):
Then I sniffed good wholesome meat and opened the door
on you. You know the rest. I washed and dined,
and now I am telling you the story I know.
He said, after a pause, that all this will be
absolutely incredible to you. To me, the one incredible thing
(03:42):
is that I am here to night, in this old,
familiar room, looking into your friendly faces, and telling you
these strange adventures. He looked at the medical man. No,
I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as
a lie or a prophecy, say I dreamed it in
the workshop. Consider, I have been speculating upon the destinies
(04:06):
of our race until I have hatched this fiction treat
my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of
art to enhance its interest, and taking it as a story.
What do you think of it? He took up his
pipe and began, in his old accustomed manner, to tap
with it nervously upon the bars of the grate. There
(04:29):
was a momentary stillness. Then chairs began to creak, and
shoes to scrape upon the carpet. I took my eyes
off the time Traveler's face and looked round at his audience.
They were in the dark, and little spots of color
swam before them. The medical man seemed absorbed in the
contemplation of our host. The editor was looking hard at
(04:52):
the end of his cigar the sixth. The journalist fumbled
for his watch. The others, as far as I remember,
were motionless. The editor stood up with a sigh. What
a pity it is. You're not a writer of stories,
he said, putting his hand on the time Traveler's shoulder.
(05:12):
You don't believe it, well, I thought not. The time
traveler turned to us. Where are the matches, he said?
He lit one and spoke over his pipe, puffing to
tell you the truth. I hardly believe it myself. And
yet his eye fell with a mute inquiry upon the
(05:35):
withered white flowers upon the little table. Then he turned
over the hand holding his pipe, and I saw he
was looking at some half heeled scars on his knuckles.
The medical man rose, came to the lamp and examined
the flowers. The gynasium's odd, he said. The psychologist leaned
(05:56):
forward to see, holding out his hand for a specimen.
I'm hanged if it isn't quarter to one, said the journalist.
How shall we get home? Plenty of cabs at the station,
said the psychologist. It's a curious thing, said the medical man.
But I certainly don't know the natural order of these flowers?
(06:17):
May I have them? The time traveler hesitated. Then suddenly, certainly,
not where did you really get them? Said the medical man.
The time traveler put his hand to his head. He
spoke like one who is trying to keep hold of
an idea that eluded him. They were put into my
(06:39):
pocket by Weena when I traveled into time. He stared
around the room. I'm damned if it isn't all going
this room and you and the atmosphere of every day
is too much for my memory. Did I ever make
a time machine or a model of a time machine?
Or is it all only a dream? They say life
(07:02):
is a dream, a precious, poor dream at times. But
I can't stand another that won't fit. It's madness. And
where did the dream come from? I must look at
that machine, if there is one. He caught up the
lamp swiftly and carried it flaring red, through the door
into the corridor. We followed him. There in the flickering
(07:24):
light of the lamp was the machine, sure enough, squat,
ugly and askew, a thing of brass, ebony, ivory and translucent,
glimmering quartz, solid to the touch. For I put out
my hand and felt the rail of it, and with
brown spots and smears upon the ivory, and bits of
(07:45):
grass and moss upon the lower parts, and one rail
bent awry. The time traveler put the lamp down on
the bench and ran his hand along the damaged rail.
It's all right now, he said. The story I told
you was true. I am sorry to have brought you
out here in the cold. He took up the lamp,
(08:06):
and in an absolute silence, we returned to the smoking room.
He came into the hall with us and helped the
editor on with his coat. The medical man looked into
his face and, with a certain hesitation, told him he
was suffering from overwork, at which he laughed hugely. I
remember him standing in the open doorway bawling good night.
(08:29):
I shared a cab with the editor. He thought the
tale a gaudy lie. For my own part, I was
unable to come to a conclusion. The story was so
fantastic and incredible, the telling so credible and sober. I
lay awake most of the night thinking about it. I
(08:49):
determined to go next day and see the time traveler again.
I was told he was in the laboratory, and, being
on easy terms in the house, I went up to him.
The laboratory, however, was empty. I stared for a minute
at the time machine and put out my hand and
touched the lever. At that, the squat substantial looking mass
(09:12):
swayed like a bow shaken by the wind. Its instability
startled me extremely, and I had a queer reminiscence of
the childish days when I used to be forbidden to meddle.
I came back through the corridor. The time traveler met
me in the smoking room. He was coming from the house.
(09:32):
He had a small camera under one arm and a
knapsack under the other. He laughed when he saw me
and gave me an elbow to shake. I'm frightfully busy,
said he with that thing in there. But is it
not some hoax? I said, do you really travel through time? Really?
(09:54):
And truly? I do? And he looked frankly into my eyes.
He hesit. His eye wandered about the room. I only
want half an hour, he said. I know why you came,
and it's awfully good of you. There's some magazines here.
If you'll stop to lunch, i'll prove you this time
(10:14):
traveling up to the hilt, specimen and all, if you'll
forgive my leaving you now. I consented, hardly comprehending than
the full import of his words, and he nodded and
went on down the corridor. I heard the door of
the laboratory slam, seated myself in a chair and took
up a daily paper. What was he going to do
(10:36):
before lunch time? Then suddenly I was reminded by an
advertisement that I had promised to meet Richardson, the publisher,
at two. I looked at my watch and saw that
I could barely save that engagement. I got up and
went down the passage to tell the time traveler. As
I took hold of the handle of the door, I
(10:56):
heard an exclamation oddly truncated at the end, and a
click and a thud. A gust of air whirled round
me as I opened the door, and from within came
the sound of broken glass falling on the floor. The
time traveler was not there. I seemed to see a ghostly,
indistinct figure sitting in a whirling mass of black and
(11:19):
brass for a moment, a figure so transparent that the
bench behind, with its sheets of drawings was absolutely distinct.
But this phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes. The
time machine had gone, say for a subsiding stir of dust.
The further end of the laboratory was empty. A pane
(11:41):
of the skylight had apparently just been blown in. I
felt an unreasonable amazement. I knew that something strange had happened,
and for the moment, could not distinguish what the strange
thing might be. As I stood staring, the door into
the garden opened and the man servant appeared. We looked
(12:02):
at each other. Then ideas began to come has mister
gone out that way? Said I, No, sir, no one
has come out this way. I was expecting to find
him here. At that, I understood. At the risk of
disappointing Richardson, I stayed on waiting for the time Traveler,
(12:24):
waiting for the second, perhaps still stranger story, and the
specimens and photographs he would bring with him. But I
am beginning now to fear that I must wait a lifetime.
The time Traveler vanished three years ago, and as everybody
knows now, he has never returned epilogue. One cannot choose
(12:50):
but wonder will he ever return? It may be that
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 sarians, the huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times.
(13:12):
He may even, now, if I may use the phrase,
be wandering on some plasiosaurus haunted oolitic coral reef, or
beside the lonely saline lakes 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
(13:36):
into the manhood of the race. For I, for my
own part, cannot think that these latter days of weak experiment,
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 the advancement of mankind,
(14:02):
and saw in the growing pile of civilization 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 of vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places
(14:25):
by the memory of his story. And I 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. The
(14:49):
End of the Time Machine by H. G. Wells
Chapter twelve of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Time Machine,
Chapter twelve. So I came back for a long time.
I must have been insensible upon the machine. The blinking
(00:22):
succession of the days and nights was resumed. The sun
got golden again, the sky blue. I breathed with greater freedom.
The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and flowed. The
hand spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw
again the dim shadows of houses, the evidences of decadent humanity.
(00:45):
These too changed and passed, and others came presently. When
the million dial was at zero, I slackened speed. I
began to recognize our own petty and familiar architecture. The
thousand's hand ran back to the starting point. The day
and night flapped slower and slower. Then the old walls
(01:06):
of the laboratory came round me very gently. Now I
slowed the mechanism down. I saw one little thing that
seemed odd to me. I think I've told you that
when I set out before, my velocity became very high.
Missus Watchett had walked across the room, traveling as it
seemed to me like a rocket. As I returned, I
(01:30):
passed again across that minute when she traversed the laboratory,
but now her every motion appeared to be the exact
inversion of her previous ones. The door at the lower
end opened, and she glided quietly up the laboratory back foremost,
and disappeared behind the door by which she had previously entered.
(01:51):
Just before that, I seemed to see Hilia for a moment,
but he passed like a flash. Then I stopped the
machine and saw about me again the old, familiar laboratory,
my tools, my appliances, just as I had left them.
I got off the thing, very shaky, and sat down
(02:12):
upon my bench. For several minutes. I trembled violently. Then
I became calmer. Around me was my old workshop again,
exactly as it had been. I might have slept there
and the whole thing have been a dream, and yet
not exactly. The thing had started from the southeast corner
(02:34):
of the laboratory, it had come to rest again in
the northwest against the wall where you saw it. That
gives you the exact distance from my little lawn to
the pedestal of the white sphinx into which the Morlocks
had carried my machine. For a time my brain went stagnant.
Presently I got up and came through the passage here,
(02:56):
limping because my heel was still painful. Feeling sorely begrimed,
I saw the pall mall gazette on the table by
the door. I found the date was indeed to day,
and looking at the time piece, saw the hour was
almost eight o'clock. I heard your voices and the clatter
of plates. I hesitated. I felt so sick and weak.
(03:21):
Then I sniffed good wholesome meat and opened the door
on you. You know the rest. I washed and dined,
and now I am telling you the story I know.
He said, after a pause, that all this will be
absolutely incredible to you. To me, the one incredible thing
(03:42):
is that I am here to night, in this old,
familiar room, looking into your friendly faces, and telling you
these strange adventures. He looked at the medical man. No,
I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as
a lie or a prophecy, say I dreamed it in
the workshop. Consider, I have been speculating upon the destinies
(04:06):
of our race until I have hatched this fiction treat
my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of
art to enhance its interest, and taking it as a story.
What do you think of it? He took up his
pipe and began, in his old accustomed manner, to tap
with it nervously upon the bars of the grate. There
(04:29):
was a momentary stillness. Then chairs began to creak, and
shoes to scrape upon the carpet. I took my eyes
off the time Traveler's face and looked round at his audience.
They were in the dark, and little spots of color
swam before them. The medical man seemed absorbed in the
contemplation of our host. The editor was looking hard at
(04:52):
the end of his cigar the sixth. The journalist fumbled
for his watch. The others, as far as I remember,
were motionless. The editor stood up with a sigh. What
a pity it is. You're not a writer of stories,
he said, putting his hand on the time Traveler's shoulder.
(05:12):
You don't believe it, well, I thought not. The time
traveler turned to us. Where are the matches, he said?
He lit one and spoke over his pipe, puffing to
tell you the truth. I hardly believe it myself. And
yet his eye fell with a mute inquiry upon the
(05:35):
withered white flowers upon the little table. Then he turned
over the hand holding his pipe, and I saw he
was looking at some half heeled scars on his knuckles.
The medical man rose, came to the lamp and examined
the flowers. The gynasium's odd, he said. The psychologist leaned
(05:56):
forward to see, holding out his hand for a specimen.
I'm hanged if it isn't quarter to one, said the journalist.
How shall we get home? Plenty of cabs at the station,
said the psychologist. It's a curious thing, said the medical man.
But I certainly don't know the natural order of these flowers?
(06:17):
May I have them? The time traveler hesitated. Then suddenly, certainly,
not where did you really get them? Said the medical man.
The time traveler put his hand to his head. He
spoke like one who is trying to keep hold of
an idea that eluded him. They were put into my
(06:39):
pocket by Weena when I traveled into time. He stared
around the room. I'm damned if it isn't all going
this room and you and the atmosphere of every day
is too much for my memory. Did I ever make
a time machine or a model of a time machine?
Or is it all only a dream? They say life
(07:02):
is a dream, a precious, poor dream at times. But
I can't stand another that won't fit. It's madness. And
where did the dream come from? I must look at
that machine, if there is one. He caught up the
lamp swiftly and carried it flaring red, through the door
into the corridor. We followed him. There in the flickering
(07:24):
light of the lamp was the machine, sure enough, squat,
ugly and askew, a thing of brass, ebony, ivory and translucent,
glimmering quartz, solid to the touch. For I put out
my hand and felt the rail of it, and with
brown spots and smears upon the ivory, and bits of
(07:45):
grass and moss upon the lower parts, and one rail
bent awry. The time traveler put the lamp down on
the bench and ran his hand along the damaged rail.
It's all right now, he said. The story I told
you was true. I am sorry to have brought you
out here in the cold. He took up the lamp,
(08:06):
and in an absolute silence, we returned to the smoking room.
He came into the hall with us and helped the
editor on with his coat. The medical man looked into
his face and, with a certain hesitation, told him he
was suffering from overwork, at which he laughed hugely. I
remember him standing in the open doorway bawling good night.
(08:29):
I shared a cab with the editor. He thought the
tale a gaudy lie. For my own part, I was
unable to come to a conclusion. The story was so
fantastic and incredible, the telling so credible and sober. I
lay awake most of the night thinking about it. I
(08:49):
determined to go next day and see the time traveler again.
I was told he was in the laboratory, and, being
on easy terms in the house, I went up to him.
The laboratory, however, was empty. I stared for a minute
at the time machine and put out my hand and
touched the lever. At that, the squat substantial looking mass
(09:12):
swayed like a bow shaken by the wind. Its instability
startled me extremely, and I had a queer reminiscence of
the childish days when I used to be forbidden to meddle.
I came back through the corridor. The time traveler met
me in the smoking room. He was coming from the house.
(09:32):
He had a small camera under one arm and a
knapsack under the other. He laughed when he saw me
and gave me an elbow to shake. I'm frightfully busy,
said he with that thing in there. But is it
not some hoax? I said, do you really travel through time? Really?
(09:54):
And truly? I do? And he looked frankly into my eyes.
He hesit. His eye wandered about the room. I only
want half an hour, he said. I know why you came,
and it's awfully good of you. There's some magazines here.
If you'll stop to lunch, i'll prove you this time
(10:14):
traveling up to the hilt, specimen and all, if you'll
forgive my leaving you now. I consented, hardly comprehending than
the full import of his words, and he nodded and
went on down the corridor. I heard the door of
the laboratory slam, seated myself in a chair and took
up a daily paper. What was he going to do
(10:36):
before lunch time? Then suddenly I was reminded by an
advertisement that I had promised to meet Richardson, the publisher,
at two. I looked at my watch and saw that
I could barely save that engagement. I got up and
went down the passage to tell the time traveler. As
I took hold of the handle of the door, I
(10:56):
heard an exclamation oddly truncated at the end, and a
click and a thud. A gust of air whirled round
me as I opened the door, and from within came
the sound of broken glass falling on the floor. The
time traveler was not there. I seemed to see a ghostly,
indistinct figure sitting in a whirling mass of black and
(11:19):
brass for a moment, a figure so transparent that the
bench behind, with its sheets of drawings was absolutely distinct.
But this phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes. The
time machine had gone, say for a subsiding stir of dust.
The further end of the laboratory was empty. A pane
(11:41):
of the skylight had apparently just been blown in. I
felt an unreasonable amazement. I knew that something strange had happened,
and for the moment, could not distinguish what the strange
thing might be. As I stood staring, the door into
the garden opened and the man servant appeared. We looked
(12:02):
at each other. Then ideas began to come has mister
gone out that way? Said I, No, sir, no one
has come out this way. I was expecting to find
him here. At that, I understood. At the risk of
disappointing Richardson, I stayed on waiting for the time Traveler,
(12:24):
waiting for the second, perhaps still stranger story, and the
specimens and photographs he would bring with him. But I
am beginning now to fear that I must wait a lifetime.
The time Traveler vanished three years ago, and as everybody
knows now, he has never returned epilogue. One cannot choose
(12:50):
but wonder will he ever return? It may be that
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 sarians, the huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times.
(13:12):
He may even, now, if I may use the phrase,
be wandering on some plasiosaurus haunted oolitic coral reef, or
beside the lonely saline lakes 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
(13:36):
into the manhood of the race. For I, for my
own part, cannot think that these latter days of weak experiment,
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 the advancement of mankind,
(14:02):
and saw in the growing pile of civilization 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 of vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places
(14:25):
by the memory of his story. And I 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. The
(14:49):
End of the Time Machine by H. G. Wells
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