In Our Time – "The Time Machine" (Archive Episode)

Podcast: In Our Time (BBC Radio 4)
Original Air Date: October 16, 2025 (Archive episode from 2019)
Host: Melvyn Bragg
Guests:

• Amanda Rees (Historian of Science, University of York)
• Simon James (Professor of English Studies, Durham University)
• Simon Schaffer (Professor of History of Science, Cambridge University)

Episode Overview

This episode explores H.G. Wells' groundbreaking 1895 novella, The Time Machine, which established the archetype of time travel in literature and provoked deep reflection on social inequality, evolution, and humanity’s fate. Melvyn Bragg and his guests analyze the novel’s historical context, ideological influences, scientific underpinnings, and philosophical implications, while examining its enduring cultural significance and the cautionary warnings it offers.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

H.G. Wells' Background and Inspirations

• Early Life and Education

  • Wells’ upbringing was marked by poverty and ill health (02:57).
  • His father was a failed shop owner but a successful fast bowler, and his mother a housekeeper; Wells credited his imaginative side to her (03:17).
  • Suffered from lung disease, which gave him time to read voraciously after breaking his leg (03:19).
  • Attended the Normal School of Science in South Kensington, learning from Thomas Henry Huxley ("Darwin’s bulldog"), gaining firsthand exposure to Darwinian evolution (04:46).
  • Although struggling in later years at school, he became prolific in writing and journalism (06:32), earning significant income and publishing widely even before The Time Machine.

• Influences from Contemporary Literature

  • Wells followed works like Bellamy's Looking Backward (utopian socialism) and Morris's News from Nowhere (pastoral future), but diverged by offering neither utopia nor arcadia (07:24–08:53).
  • Engaged with earlier speculative fiction by writers like Mark Twain and Jules Verne, but introduced the technological and scientific framework of time travel (09:03).

Plot Outline and Structure of the Novel

• The unnamed "Time Traveller" invents a machine that propels him to the year 802,701 AD (09:22), where he encounters:
  • The Eloi: Above-ground, child-like, beautiful but intellectually diminished descendants of the elite (10:27).
  • The Morlocks: Underground, ape-like, technically adept, and predatory descendants of the working class (11:03).
  • The relationship between the Eloi and Morlocks is a grim inversion of class dynamics: the Morlocks farm and eat the Eloi (11:33).
  • The protagonist barely escapes back to Victorian England, offering his experiences as a possible warning rather than a proof (11:57).

The Significance of the Machine and Scientific Context

• Technological Agency

  • Prior time travel stories relied on sleep, magic, or divine intervention; Wells made temporal displacement a matter of human engineering (12:25).
  • Amanda Rees: “The machine is a tool for manipulating time and being able to move through time in a controlled fashion and in a controlled way.” (13:30)
  • The machine's depiction was influenced by the contemporary rise of bicycles and parallels with early cinema and fairground rides (16:17–18:16).

• Legitimacy Through Science

  • Wells begins with a “stiff” scientific discussion, introducing the concept of the fourth dimension, giving plausibility to the fiction (13:30; 14:05).
  • The early chapters domesticate the impossible by presenting it in a familiar, upper-middle-class context ("bit like Sherlock Holmes is set up” - 14:26).

Class Struggle and Evolutionary Pessimism

• The Eloi and Morlocks represent the endgame of unchecked social division (19:01; 19:23), echoing Victorian anxieties about class, urbanization, and evolution.
• Simon James: “The class divisions... can be fixed in Welles worldview with education. Now, education is Wells panacea for the social divisions that he sees in the world that he lives in.” (20:07)
• Despite Wells' commitment to science and education, the story is deeply pessimistic about humanity’s future should current social inequalities continue (20:38; 24:12).
• The novel incorporates eugenic themes, exploring the consequences of artificial selection and social engineering (22:15; 23:44).

Pessimism, Catastrophe, and Human Destiny

• Instead of a triumphal future, the novel presents “the tragedy of extinction,” extending the bleak outlook by depicting the eventual death of all life when the sun expires (24:25; 40:32).
• Simon Schaffer: “It wasn’t, in other words, just that Wells had evoked a machine, but that the experience of traveling on such a machine began to conform ever more closely with the experience the Victorian audience... was beginning to have... of early cinema.” (16:17)
• The Palace of Green Porcelain, a ruined museum in the far future, symbolizes the decay of human achievement (38:25).

Parallels to Victorian Society and Literary Devices

• The story is also a satire on the regression of civilization: the Eloi’s fruit-eating idleness vs. the Morlocks’ mechanized brutality (30:22; 31:35).
• The dinner party framing and the Time Traveller’s ambiguous evidence (two unidentifiable flowers) ensure the story remains open-ended, a warning and not a prediction (28:33; 43:13).
• Amanda Rees: “What matters is the story, and what matters is the warning contained within the story.” (43:31)

Enduring Legacy & Later Reflections

• The guests discuss how the novel set the standard for later time-travel stories, usually focused on traveling to the past, and how Wells' impact extended far beyond this one book (46:52; 49:51).
• Wells saw himself as a teacher and journalist first, believing literature should be a vehicle for social instruction and progress, not merely art for art’s sake (bonus: 45:13).
• The open ending encourages readers to consider their own agency in shaping the future (“...it remains for us to live as though it were not so. So we should try to make things better. That future is not written in ink.” – Simon James, 43:13).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Wells’ Education:
  “He was taught by Thomas Henry Huxley... the expositor of natural selection and of Darwinism, a man of extraordinary charisma, to whom, in fact, Wells eventually sent a copy of the Time Machine as a gift, alleging that it was partly an illustration of Huxley's views.”
  — Simon Schaffer, 04:46

• On Class and Evolution:
  “So, in a grisly act of class revenge, the Morlocks literally get to eat the rich.”
  — Simon James, 11:37

• On Science Fiction’s Purpose:
  “Science fiction is often criticized for not being realist. Whatever that means. But this is a profoundly realist introduction... it's that domestication that makes it possible for Wells to domesticate the impossible later on and to make it real for the readership.”
  — Amanda Rees, 14:05/14:28

• On Human Agency:
  “Wells is using the experiences of the time traveller to reflect essentially on the nature of humanity and on the nature of the human condition and how in essence, we recognise the humanity in each other.”
  — Amanda Rees, 14:48

• On Catastrophe:
  “Human history becomes more and more of a race between education and catastrophe... in the Time Machine, he shows a catastrophe, that this is what happens if you don't listen to people like me.”
  — Simon James, 20:58

• On the Decay of Achievement:
  “Every single book in the vast library in the palace of Green Porcelain is shredded, almost all the machines abandoned, rusted, useless... Every achievement of urbanity has fallen to bits and is now neglected.”
  — Simon Schaffer, 38:25

• On the Novel’s Enduring Warning:
  “It doesn't matter if it's true or not. It doesn't matter if the story is veridical in any sense. What matters is the story, and what matters is the warning contained within the story.”
  — Amanda Rees, 43:31

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:04] Introduction to The Time Machine and H.G. Wells' aims
• [02:57–06:28] Wells’ biography and scientific education
• [07:24–09:22] Literary influences and utopian/dystopian context
• [09:22–11:57] Plot summary and analysis of Eloi/Morlock society
• [12:25–13:30] The significance of using a machine for time travel
• [14:05–16:17] Realism, plausibility, and the role of scientific ideas
• [16:17–18:16] Parallels to bicycles, cinema, and fairground rides
• [19:01–20:07] The novel as social and evolutionary warning
• [20:07–24:25] Education, optimism, pessimism, and eugenics
• [24:25–27:13] Catastrophic vision: extinction, the end of humanity
• [28:33–29:05] The ambiguous evidence and plausibility of the time travel tale
• [38:25] The Palace of Green Porcelain and symbolism of societal decay
• [40:32–41:33] The far, far future and eschatological vision
• [43:13–43:44] Open ending and the question of truthfulness
• [45:13–53:22] Bonus: reflections on the aesthetic movement, class, Wells’s legacy, and influence on later fiction

Final Thoughts

The Time Machine stands as a milestone in both science fiction and social critique, warning that humanity’s greatest achievements—civilization and technological progress—carry the seeds of their own undoing if social divides persist. The episode’s nuanced panel links Wells’ speculative imagination to his biography, his philosophical and scientific context, and his larger mission to rouse the public to reflect and act. The story’s unresolved ending charges readers to take heed—and perhaps, change the future.

For further exploration:

• Listen to the full episode for rich anecdotes and deeper dives into literary and scientific context.
• Recommended follow-up: Future "In Our Time" episode on Robert Burns’ influence on literature and society.

(In memory of Simon James, as noted in the episode’s conclusion.)