A web site devoted to novels and films that confront the social, ethical, and cultural implications of genetics.
The Time Machine (1895)
By H.G. Wells
In Wells’s famous novel, an unnamed scientist known only as “The Time Traveller” tells the story of his adventures in the future to a roomful of distinguished dinner guests, one of whom narrates the novel. Using the time machine he has invented, the Time Traveller journeys to the year 802, 701 AD. When he arrives, he encounters a civilization of gentle, child-like creatures whom he soon learns are frivolous, indolent, and dull-minded, despite their beauty and innocence. This androgynous race, called the Eloi, live in communistic harmony: everyone looks the same, dresses the same, eats the same diet consisting entirely of fruit, speaks the same extremely simplistic language, and sleeps together in palace-like buildings...