The Time Machine

I love The Time Machine.  I loved it the first time I read it and I still do.  I read The Time Machine a long time ago, in my second year of University and it is when I became a fan of H.G. Wells. It led me to read The Island of Dr. Moreau and War of the Worlds and contributed to my interest in classic science fiction and fantasy.

The Time Machine is Wells's science-fiction commentary on the social classes of his time.  It's a brilliant, sad, exciting story.  It's also a very short novel, practically a novella by today's standards, and Wells packed in a lot.  The unnamed narrator travels to the year 802,701 AD.  There the world is very different from what it was in the 19th century.  People aren't quite people anymore.  The Time Traveler (who some posit could represent Wells himself) goes through many different theories before arriving at the "correct" one in the end. (Are we actually sure it's correct?  The Time Traveler has skipped over more than 800 000 years of evolution, though his final theory makes the most sense from his perspective.)  

The Time Traveler goes through a change over the course of his experiences with the Eloi and the Morlocks. I think his friends, especially the narrator go through a change as well, as they listen to the Time Traveler's story.  There's a mystery left in the end and I think it was fantastic.  I can't recommend The Time Machine enough to fans of science fiction and classics.