A Lever Toward the End of the World: H. G. Wells and His Time Machine
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17851/2317-2096.29.4.49-64Keywords:
H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, science fiction, English literatureAbstract
The Time Machine, the first novel by the English writer H. G. Wells, has since its launch in 1895 been an important publishing success and has become one of the precursors of the most representative works of modern science fiction. One of its essential characteristics is the proposal of a temporal journey provided by human action, based on the knowledge of its time. In dialoguing with the vogue scientific premises Wells created not only a machine, but also a set of possibilities about the human relationship with time, conceived no longer aprioristically as natural, but conjectured as a possible element to be grasped and shaped by human action. In this article, I propose to analyze the time-traveling machine as a Wellsian creation and discuss both material and scientific foundations that accompanied it, as well as a historical-philosophical conception of time as a concrete human experience.
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