The Time Machine - Things that stay the same

"I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveler was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness. ... [T]he Time Traveller had more than a touch of whim among his elements, and we distrusted him." (12)

"The Journalist, too, would not believe at any price, and joined the Editor in the easy work of heaping ridicule on the whole thing." (15) 

H.G. Wells has been lauded for his uncanny ability to predict new technologies before they were actually developed. Obviously not all of the inventions he wrote about have come to pass (including time machines), but he did predict atomic bombs, World War II, genetic engineering and lasers. I would also argue, however, that H.G. was a gifted social observer. In the above paragraph, for example, we see a depressingly accurate description of the state of human relations in our own time. With so much cleverness in the world today, who can be trusted?

Perhaps the strength of Wells's social observations is not in prediction, but in observing aspects of the human condition that stubbornly endure. Technological developments have changed the scope of human life, but core issues remain. 

One of the details of the Time Machine that I find remarkable is how the story does not end. The story does not end in a grand revolution, with the Time Traveller helping the Eloi defeat their carnivorous masters. Rather, the Time Traveller escapes with his life, leaving behind a burning forest and many dead in his wake. Could it be that H.G. is critiquing the tendency to retreat to one's own personal affairs and concerns? Is this the beginning of an idea that could rightly be called chronopolitanism, an extension of cosmopolitanism? After the Time Traveller leaves the time of the Eloi and Morlocks, he goes far forward to witness the end of the world, as if witnessing cosmic destruction is just something to entertain the idly curious. Perhaps H.G. Wells is suggesting that technological improvements do not change a man, and that improving the human condition will take something more. The fact that Wells's subtle social commentaries still ring true suggests that once again, he was right.