The Future of "Brave New World" is "The Time Machine"

Brave New World gives us a dramatic view of a future in which the technology made possible by science brings science to a halt. This future is consistent with the more remote future seen by the Time Traveler in Wells's Time Machine. After the disruptive influence of science has been permanently tamed by the triumph of bureaucracy and eugenics, it is easy to imagine human society remaining stuck in the rigidly conservative caste system of Brave New World for thousands of centuries, until the s...

 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...

 Your Birth Star

Name any event in history and you will find a star out there whose light gives you a glimpse of something happening during the year of that event. Provided you are not a very young child, somewhere up in the night sky you can find your personal birth star. Its light is a thermonuclear glow that heralds the year of your birth. Indeed, you can find quite a few such stars (about 40 if you are 40; about 70 if you are 50; about 175 if you are 80 years old). When you look at one of your birth year ...

 H.G. Wells Time Machine and Evolution

Nobody has imagined the future of fate with greater artistry than H. G. Wells in his fantasy The Time Machine, published in 1895. Wells imagined the human species split in two, the spark of reason dulled and the sense of purpose extinguished. His two species, the degenerate descendants of the upper and lower classes of Victorian England, are caught in an evolutionary dead end without hope of escape. The lower class, living underground like rats, has retained enough manual dexterity to keep th...