Today marks 143 years since the birth of H.G. Wells. He was a man of many and varied parts: writer, futurist, amateur historian, and socialist crackpot.
In my youth I was captivated by his science fiction stories. His simple, expressive style gave vividness and immediacy to his tales. My favorite was The Time Machine. Here is an excerpt wherein the time traveler is stranded in the future after someone locks up his time machine in a mysterious White Sphinx. He reconnoiters the area and observes the Eloi, a band of childlike people living in great palaces that far exceeded their skill or diligence to construct. (Think of the Eloi as distant descendants of today's Slacker generation but more cheerful and better groomed.) The time traveler struggles to make sense of it all. At this point in the story, he rescues the lovely Weena.
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I must confess that my satisfaction with my first theories of an
automatic civilization and a decadent humanity did not long endure.
Yet I could think of no other. Let me put my difficulties. The
several big palaces I had explored were mere living places, great
dining-halls and sleeping apartments. I could find no machinery, no
appliances of any kind. Yet these people were clothed in pleasant
fabrics that must at times need renewal, and their sandals, though
undecorated, were fairly complex specimens of metalwork. Somehow
such things must be made. And the little people displayed no vestige
of a creative tendency. There were no shops, no workshops, no sign
of importations among them. They spent all their time in playing
gently, in bathing in the river, in making love in a half-playful
fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. I could not see how things
were kept going.
Then, again, about the Time Machine: something, I knew not what,
had taken it into the hollow pedestal of the White Sphinx. Why? For
the life of me I could not imagine. Those waterless wells, too,
those flickering pillars. I felt I lacked a clue. I felt--how shall
I put it? Suppose you found an inscription, with sentences here and
there in excellent plain English, and interpolated therewith, others
made up of words, of letters even, absolutely unknown to you? Well,
on the third day of my visit, that was how the world of Eight
Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One presented itself to
me!
That day, too, I made a friend--of a sort. It happened that, as I
was watching some of the little people bathing in a shallow, one of
them was seized with cramp and began drifting downstream. The main
current ran rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a moderate
swimmer. It will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange
deficiency in these creatures, when I tell you that none made the
slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying little thing which
was drowning before their eyes. When I realized this, I hurriedly
slipped off my clothes, and, wading in at a point lower down, I
caught the poor mite and drew her safe to land. A little rubbing of
the limbs soon brought her round, and I had the satisfaction of
seeing she was all right before I left her. I had got to such a low
estimate of her kind that I did not expect any gratitude from her.
In that, however, I was wrong.
This happened in the morning. In the afternoon I met my little
woman, as I believe it was, as I was returning towards my centre
from an exploration, and she received me with cries of delight and
presented me with a big garland of flowers--evidently made for me
and me alone. The thing took my imagination. Very possibly I had
been feeling desolate. At any rate I did my best to display my
appreciation of the gift. We were soon seated together in a little
stone arbour, engaged in conversation, chiefly of smiles. The
creature's friendliness affected me exactly as a child's might have
done. We passed each other flowers, and she kissed my hands. I did
the same to hers. Then I tried talk, and found that her name was
Weena, which, though I don't know what it meant, somehow seemed
appropriate enough. That was the beginning of a queer friendship
which lasted a week, and ended--as I will tell you!
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