Social Commentary in "The Time Machine"

Science is my territory, but science fiction landscape of my dreams. The year 1995 was the hundredth anniversary of the publication of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, perhaps the darkest view of the human future ever imagined. Wells used a dramatic story to give his contemporaries a glimpse of a possible future. His purpose was not to predict but to warn. He was angry with the human species for its failures and follies. He was especially angry with the E nglish class system under which he had...

 We Cannot Extend Our Lives Forward, but We Can Backwards

The alchemists of past centuries tried hard to make the elixir of life: ... Those efforts were in vain; it is not in our power to obtain the experiences and the views of the future by prolonging our lives forward in this direction. However, it is well possible in a certain sense to prolong our lives backwards by acquiring the experiences of those who existed before us and by learning to know their views as well as if we were their contemporaries. The means for doing this is also an elixir of ...

 Environmental Influence on Gender

There are many well-established natural factors that bias the sex ratio of human offspring, proving that it is at least possible. The most famous is the returning-soldier effect. During and immediately after major wars, more sons are born than usual in the belligerent countries as if to replace the men that died. (This would make little sense; the men born after wars will mate with their contemporaries, not with those widowed by the war). Older fathers are more likely to have girls, but older...