The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

Two goats were grazing on a rubbish dump.  One goat came across an open can of motion picture film and started chewing on the film that had spilled out.  After a while, the second goat asked the first 'How is it?'  The first goat replied 'I enjoyed the book better.'

It's like that, isn't it?  Sometimes the book is better, sometimes the film is better.

I have very fond memories of the 1960 film of The Time Machine starring Rod Taylor as the Time Traveller and Yvette Mimieux as Weena, which I first saw when I was quite young.  I remember being struck by the exotic set designs and by the design of the time machine.  Also, while the scary bits of the film didn't scare me, it did have me sitting on the edge of my seat with curiosity as the Time Traveller edged his way into the near future through a number of vignettes showing us the unfolding 20th Century that we knew and an apocalyptic vision of a nuclear war that was to come (remember, it was the 1960s and there was a Cold War brewing).  The Time Traveller then jumps into the far future to the year 802,701 CE.  Here we are shown a utopian society and the awful truth that underlies it.  There is some derring-do, and then the Time Traveller escapes back to the present day and to his friends.

How different the book is.  There is no vision of the future other than the awful year 802,701, and beyond that the vision of a dying earth under a bloated red and giant sun.  It is a dystopian vision.  The Time Traveller tells his circle of friends: 

I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been.  It had committed suicide.  It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes - to come to this at last.

The Time Traveller argues that change, danger and uncertainty are necessary to keep us recognisably human.  It is an argument that Robert Graves echoes in Seven Days in New Crete.  Also, that there is a ferocious animal side to human nature is a theme Wells revisited in The First Men in the Moon.

The Time Machine is a well-written story.  The narrative moves along briskly, the description and exposition are vivid without being either purple or boring.  The argument in the book is disappointingly brief, and it is a pity the body of the book is so monopolised by threat and violence, when it could have been so much more.  Wells himself admits that the body of the story is perhaps less substantial than the opening chapters.  Still, as a story that was whipped up in a brief period when the author was between jobs, it is not too bad (and being short it can be read in an afternoon).

Would I read it again?  No.  Am I glad that I read it?  Yes, and it has made me long to see the movie again.

I read the Penguin edition which contained a thoughtful and interesting introduction by Marina Warner.