You can manage bookmarks using lists, please log in to your user account for this.
Media type:
E-Article
Title:
"The Time Machine": Or, The Fourth Dimension as Prophecy
Contributor:
Philmus, Robert M.
imprint:
Modern Language Association of America, 1969
Published in:PMLA
Language:
English
ISSN:
0030-8129
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
<p>Most of the early science fantasies of H. G. Wells are, as he defines the term, prophetic: the myths that they develop to a logical conclusion represent a critique of some historical or essential aspect of the human condition. "The Time Machine", his first scientific romance, explores the premises of prophetic fantasy at the same time that it embodies a myth of its own. In it Wells envisions the future devolution of man, already outlined in previous essays of his, as the ultimate consequence of what he perceived as a present attitude of complacent optimism, an attitude he dramatizes in the reaction of the fictive audience to the Time Traveller's account of the world of 802,701 and beyond. Although the Time Traveller accepts this vision as literally true, his own theories about that world make it clear that its significance pertains to it only as a metaphoric projection of tendencies existing in the present. Thus the structure of "The Time Machine" reveals the Time Traveller's point of view, like that of his audience, to be limited: his final disappearance into the fantasied world of the future vindicates the rigorous integrity of Wells's prophecy.</p>