Proto-Science Fiction discussion

I created a poll to run for a month for us to vote on whether this group is a good idea. Regardless of the ratio of answers, if we get enough "Yes" votes and no one finds us a better home, I'd like to establish the group.

That said, if I've created a duplicate of something that someone can find elsewhere, then please comment so that we can all consider moving over there!

http://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/54...

How clever you are! It would be great to talk about The Time Machine while it is still fresh in my mind. On the other hand, there will be a whole gang of people doing a group read starting November 15 here.

http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/9...

In the meantime, I will blather on about something and you can tell me how you interpreted the story. I see it as a screed on Darwinism. Homo sapiens devolves into two species.

The upper classes become the Eloi and live in a garden where they play all day, and lose more and more of their rational faculties. The working classes devolve into the Morlocks, humanoids, are confined underground where they work like machines and look and behave like beasts.

This is what confuses me. If it's also a pro-Marxist tract, why are Well's sympathies with the Eloi? It is clear that Wells is disgusted by the Morlocks. Or have I missed something?

And if work is what preserves human creativity and rationality, etc., why would the workers end up blind, in a hole, and confined to rely on hunting parties on moonless nights for their nourishment?

Bea wrote: "If it's also a pro-Marxist tract, why are Well's sympathies with the Eloi? It is clear that Wells is disgusted by the Morlocks. Or have I missed something?

And if work is what preserves human creativity and rationality, etc., why would the workers end up blind, in a hole, and confined to rely on hunting parties on moonless nights for their nourishment? "

I think you have great points and great questions. I don't think I have any original answers for you, unfortunately. In general, I take the two races as presented in Wells' novel as being the "monsters" versus the "innocents", but without going to looks someone else's opinion up I actually am not sure what the author's agenda may have been.

I've been enamored of The Time Machine since watching the original movie as a kid -- it's what first got the nerd in me interested in science fiction and the general concept of time travel. Due to my early experience with it, I wasn't thinking of anything except for the "wow" factor about the movie (and later when I read the novel -- the same), so we may have to hope that someone else more versed in Wells will come along to discuss with us.

I did recently read The Time Ships, and it expands on the story and gives quite an alternate explanation for the Morlocks and how the time traveler should handle them, and it also discusses why the time traveler would be predisposed to condemn the Morlocks even before he discovered their more gruesome side. However, it is lengthy and doesn't resolve all of that until the very end.

Perhaps a new thread should be started here for further discussion of The Time Machine?

I didn't realize it at the time, but a thread has been started that has potential to be an alternate home for discussion of early Sci-Fi, so i thought I would point it out here:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/6...

At this point, we're all still in discussion about what we want to do, but I want to make sure we're all aware of the options.

At this point it seems there is at least tentative interest in moving this group forward, so I think we should give this a shot. Over the next few days I hope that we can gain some clarity on what kinds of works we want to include and begin nominations for our first group read!

Bea, I know you posted this a while ago, but I wanted to put in my 2 cents' worth on the Eloi/Morlocks question. I'm not totally sure all of Wells' sympathies *are* with the Eloi. If I remember rightly, they are portrayed as beautiful but weak, helpless and rather stupid. But if I had a choice between staying with Eloi or Morlocks, I'd pick the Eloi any day.

Richard wrote: "...But if I had a choice between staying with Eloi or Morlocks, I'd pick the Eloi any day. "

Agreed! I prefer not to be dinner. :-)

The Morlocks had the Eloi trained in the same way as humans train sheep or cattle.