The Time Machine

The Time Machine was written by H.G. Wells and published in 1895.  This is Wells' first published story, about a time traveler who travels to the future to discover a society where the upper class, the childlike "Eloi," live above ground on the surface of the earth, and the lower class, the savage "Morlocks," live underground in a subterranean world:

"Again, the great exclusive tendency of richer people--due, no doubt, to the increasing refinement if their education, and the widening gulf between them and the rude violence of the poor--is already leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land.  About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country is shut in against intrusion.  And this same widening gulf--which is due to the length and expense of the higher educational process and the increased facilities for and temptations toward refined habits on the part of the rich--will make that exchange between class and class, the promotion by intermarriage which at present retards the splitting of our species along lines of social stratification, less and less frequent.  So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour.  Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears.  Some of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs.  As it seemed to me, the refined beauty and their etoilated pallor followed naturally enough."


Unlike his When the Sleeper Wakes, the upper classes seem to be more sympathetic to Wells in this wicked little (80 pages!) cautionary tale of science-fiction, as the Morlocks are treating the Eloi like stupid cows and are eating them!

This is what happens when there is no middle class!

That Wells, ahead of his time, as usual...

When the Sleeper Wakes

When the Sleeper Wakes was written by H.G. Wells in 1899.  It's about a man named Graham who wakes up after a 200 year sleep to find that he alone is the top 1% of the world economy.  There are some visionary concepts in here; he predicted: television, flying machines, advertising, banking, pleasure cities with incredible architecture and moving walkways, but it's mainly a book about class status and social stratification of the future and the struggle against the totalitarian empire.  Wells was a prophet; over 100 years ago he wrote this:

Very speedily power was in the hands of great men of business who financed the machines.  A time came when the real power and interest of the Empire rested visibly between the two party councils, ruling by newspapers and electoral organizations--two small groups of rich and able men, working at first in opposition, then presently together....
The urgent necessity of either capturing or depriving the party councils of power is a common suggestion underlying all the thoughtful work of the early twentieth century, both in America and England...
The counter revolution never came.  It could never organize and keep pure.  There was not enough of the old sentimentality, the old faith in righteousness, left among men.  Any organization that became big enough to influence the polls became complex enough to be undermined, broken up, or bought outright by capable rich men.  Socialistic and Popular, Reactionary and Purity Parties were all at last mere Stock Exchange counters, selling their principles to pay for electioneering.  And the great concern of the rich was naturally to keep property intact, the board clear for the game of trade.  Just as the feudal concern had been to keep the board clear for hunting and war.  The whole world was exploited, a battlefield of business; and financial convulsions, the scourge of currency manipulation, tariff wars, made more human misery during the twentieth century--because the wretchedness was dreary life instead of speedy death--than had war, pestilence and famine, in the darkest hour of earlier history.


'Nuff said!