Category: Books

“The Time Machine” (1895) was written at the latter end of the Victorian age, a time during which great scientific discoveries and leaps in progress were made. The concept of time travel was most likely fueled  by the discovery of, and the advances of, electrical energy, which then would have prompted an imagining of unparalleled potential, if harnessed effectively – in this case, the potential to travel through time.

H.G. Wells was then, and is known today, as a keen science fiction author, having touched upon the subject of science fiction many times before. The Time Machine tells the tale of a keen scientist who claims, to a room full of scarcely-believing friends, that he has just returned from a journey into the distant future, where many erstwhile unbelievable things he has experienced and seen, w ho then begins to recount his adventure.

Told from a third-person perspective, the narrator is relaying the time traveler’s tale, who jump started his time machine to embark upon a distinctly uncomfortable, but incredible, journey through the fabric of space and time, to end up in the year 802, 701 AD, a time when the the “society” of Earth has become virtually unrecognizable.

The first “people” he encounters are the “Eloi”, a race of barely-human people who have evolved over time to become impossibly ethereal and delicate, both physically and mentally, the implication being that they signify the “elite” society of the contemporary age, who have evolved to a point where intellect and strong feeling are no longer conducive to their surviving. The time traveler soon forges a bond with a female Eloi called Weena, a relationship which is hinted as being potentially romantic, but the “woman” is far too childlike and simple for this  to legitimately be the case.

He observes the Eloi, and their way of life, with a relatively dispassionate, but intellectually keen, narrative voice. However before long his time machine is mysteriously stolen by a dark and primitive underground-dwelling race called the Morlocks, who abhor sunlight and have evolved from the working class of the contemporary age to become what they now are. Worse, it turns out that every so often, they emerge during the night to feed on the Eloi, who in turn live in fear of them constantly.

This could be construed quite easily as the reverse of the upper class looking down upon, and suppressing, the working class, whom they deem to be inferior and exist only to serve the elite. The sheer extent of the division between the two races of people has resulted in both evolving to become extreme examples of “predator” and “prey”, in a brutal and inevitable “return to nature”.

After one night raid, in which the forest catches fire, engulfing Weena along with many of the Eloi (as is the implication), the time traveler casts himself into his time machine, just in time, to propel himself even further into the future, almost to the “end of time”, when the Sun is dying and on Earth there is a permanent sunset/sunrise, and there is virtually no trace of recognizable life.

There is a strong influence of a “Dying Earth Subgenre”, in which the ultimate end of the world, and of civilization, would inevitably form in the minds of the more imaginative and forward-thinking people of the age. Most remarkable here is the prompting of a mental projection into a future in which civilization, and society, disappear completely, and where humanity has left little to no trace.

After marveling at the unique glimpse of the future granted to him alone, the time traveler eventually manages to return to the late nineteenth century from where he came, just a few hours before his initial departure, and in good time to tell his friends of his adventure, once more.

Perhaps it is in the very fact that the entire tale is told as a “tale within a tale”, by a listener to the time traveler’s story, which shows that his tale is not doubted at all by at least one person, so fully and intricately has he related the experience. Given that time travel is still an endeavor which humanity is striving towards in the present day, and may still remain within the realms of “science fiction”, “The Time Machine” still manages to retain the same sense of speculative possibility today – over a century into the future – as it did at the time of writing.

 

Bright Young Things is the high concept story of a group of young people who respond to an ad for “bright young things” who are wanted “for a big project”, and who all mysteriously wake up in a house on a remote island, with no recollection as to how, or why, they are there.

In Part One we are introduced to the characters one by one. They are – Anne, a girl of a nervous disposition with a sheltered life and not sure of what to do next in life; Jamie, a mathematician who is haunted by numbers and looking for his next challenge (What’s the square root of everything? Nothing.”; Thea, who works in a nursing home and is also become tired with her lot in life; Bryn, a petty drug dealer who does freelance photography; Emily, a “bright young thing” who is conventionally attractive and ends up working for an escort agency; Paul, a vegetarian workaholic who is on the verge of quitting, and for the sheer thrill, is planning on releasing a virus in the near future.

A little is said about how each person came to the point of travelling all the way to Edinburgh for an interview for a job about which they know nothing. At least on the surface, they seem to have little in common, which makes their discovering themselves trapped together in the middle of nowhere all the more bewildering.

Of course, their first instinct is to wonder what could possibly have happened to them, the general consensus being that the interview people drugged them, for whatever reason, and dropped them off here. But as they explore, the house is well stocked with supplies and a sign saying “PLEASE. MAKE YOURSELVES AT HOME”.

However, it is not long until it becomes apparent that, rather than trying to escape immediately, the young people start talking about all the various things they’re into when it comes to “pop culture” (taking place in 1999, many of the pop culture references will perhaps be lost on people of a similar age today). Some – Thea particularly – object to resorting to discussing lowbrow entertainment such as pop music and soap operas, and being sarcastic all the time – indeed most of the time, being ironic is more important than being genuine – but with otherwise such contrasting backgrounds, the “bonding” effect of their conversation is surprising.

The superficiality of their conversation – discussing soap plots for pages at a time – is potentially off-putting, but as the “bonding” goes on into their first night there, the superficial eventually leads into the meaningful, with deep and dark secrets coming out into the open, mostly with the help of a drunken game of “Truth or Dare”.

Events soon take a drastic sinister turn, when they decide to call it a night and stumble back to their beds; one of them goes exploring in the attic and there finds a dead body; someone who, presumably only died a short time ago, and who must have brought them all there in the first place. It is only at this point in the story that they all seriously contemplate how to make an escape, and after a few of them have varying degrees of breakdown, along with more soul-searching, they eventually hatch a plan to build a boat and send the dead body away with a note asking for their rescue. After that, their future is, seemingly, left entirely up to fate.

Bright Young Things is largely built upon inner dialogue, where each character contemplates what’s going on, and outer dialogue, which is itself built largely upon the pop culture – and the trend for self-conscious affectation – of the time. The author, Scarlett Thomas, alludes to this in the introduction, saying that “The characters in Bright Young Things don’t know they are in a book, but they do know that they are in a story”.

Basically, the whole unlikely scenario the young people find themselves in is dealt with by treating it like a random occurrence in everyday life, which each character treats like a “story”. Even if many of the references now seem out of date, its use in aiding the “story” of the young people in this bizarre situation seems more appropriate.

Simply substitute any pop culture reference in the story for a more up-to-date one, and the same idea will still apply; this story can be seen as a satire of modern culture, or simply a survival story, most likely, it is probably meant to be both at the same time.