Time Machine

A few days ago I saw a video of an interview between Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff Sommers at the Independent women's forum may 16, 2017. In it Paglia discusses with Hoff Sommers the current debacle of feminism in western world. In the conversation Paglia makes reference to one of her favorite movies as teen, "The Time Machine (1960)". After watching the movie I decided to go for more and read the whole book.

H.G. Wells published The Time Machine in 1895, twenty years before Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Although not a formal scientific treaty but a science fiction novel, The Time Machine plot is rich in modern science ideas that popularized traveling in time.

As many book made movies there are important differences in the plot yet both share some of the key ideas.

In Time Machine, H. G. Wells narrates the story of a Time Traveler from the point of view of his curious friend, probably named Hillyer. The Time Traveler is an inventor and adventurer who has an interesting theory about time.

"There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it."

For him time travel is possible if one moves in that dimension, thus no change of Space position. As an inventor he shows a scale prototype to his visitors and most of them leave skeptically, Hillyer curiosity makes him go back just to find that the Time Traveler had a full scale device he later used to travel to the future.

In a later scene the Time Traveler returns beaten and in rags finding his friends sitting at the dinner table. After having some food he start telling the story of what happened during his trip to the future.

The most relevant part, adapted by the movie, is his stay in C.E. 802,701 when he faces two human descendant species, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The later are ape like carnivorous who live Under-world, while the first are "beautiful and graceful creatures, but indescribably frail" who lived Upper-world without major worries but who end up being a sort of cattle for the Morlocks.

The Time Traveler was optimist before his trip "I had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art, everything." but after meeting the Eloi "For a moment I felt that I had built the Time Machine in vain." There are more similar references, like his poor preparation with tools thinking that in the future technology would be much better.

Wells description of the Eloi resembles the critique of Paglia and Hoff Sommers

"where population is balanced and abundant, much childbearing becomes an evil rather than a blessing to the state; where violence comes but rarely and offspring are secure, there is less necessity - indeed there is no necessity - for and efficient family, and the specialization of the sexes with reference of their children's needs disappears. We see some beginnings of thi even in our own time, and in this future age it was complete."

Although the Time Traveler was wrong in his theory his description of the dystopian future resembles what extreme groups are aiming for.

Should we be pessimists as the Time Traveler and Paglia or optimists as the narrator?

He, I know thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its maker in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so.