The Time Machine (AmazonClassics Edition)

By: H. G. Wells

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 3 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

A scientist and gentleman inventor in industrialized Victorian England claims to have irrefutable proof that time is not simply a concept - it's a whole other dimension. When he reveals the prototype of a time-traveling machine to his peers, he's met with skepticism at first...until he returns one week later, disheveled, bloody, and with a fantastic story to tell.

A cornerstone of speculative science fiction, The Time Machine launched the time-traveling genre, influenced generations of writers, and is recognized as a prescient vision of twenty-first-century fears - those of an impending environmental nightmare and the irreversible fate of a dying planet.

AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from the masters of storytelling. Ideal for anyone who wants to listen to a great work for the first time or rediscover an old favorite, these new editions open the door to literature's most unforgettable characters and beloved worlds.

Revised edition: Previously published as The Time Machine, this edition of The Time Machine (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.

Public Domain (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Required reading for the serious fan of the genre!

One of the first authors to really explore the potential perils of Time Travel as a genre, H.G. Wells projects his own culture into the far future and writes a cautionary tale just as relevant today as it was a hundred years ago. The prose is excellent with none of the grammar and punctuation errors that are so common today. Have read this novella many times and now I get to enjoy it in Audible format as well!

There's a lot to unpack.

This was very different than I thought it was going to be. But I should have figured that given when it was written that it would have been written in the style of a friend telling it and there would be more telling than showing.

I also thought that the Time Traveler (who goes unnamed) would travel back in time and change history, not go to the future.

There's a lot to unpack about the future he goes to. A lot. It would take some deep analyzing to say more about it.

I'll just sum up that I enjoyed it and Simon Vance performed a good narration.

3 out of 5 Clocks.

More philosophical, but story still holds up

It's more philosophical than adventurous but still a pretty good story. Can't deny how imaginative it is for the time it was written.

Comments from a reader

This is a fun science-fiction novel. Despite being an old novel it felt like reading a new and modern book. A must read.

Not as engrossing as I hoped

I’m glad this was short as I found parts to be tedious. I can, however, see why it would be a novel concept in 1895; I wonder what the Time Traveler would make of our crazy world today if he set the machine for the 2020s!

A Landmark Piece of Science Fiction

The Time Machine is a cornerstone of science fiction, and the narrator's performance makes this version very easy to listen to. While I feel that this is a classic that should be read because of its significance, some of Wells's suppositions about the future (while representative of knowledge at the time this book was written) are dated and are almost absurd to our 21st Century ears. Still an entertaining book and worth listening to.

Classic sci-if!

Nothing quite like the original time traveler in the original time travel story. It's a classic and should be enjoyed by any sci-fi fan!

It was good to revisit this story.

It turned out to be more philosophically oriented than I'd remembered, with speculation about the evolutionary future of the human race, the haves and have nots.
Certainly not the movie interpretation with Rod Taylor.
The Time Traveler remains nameless, as do all the characters save Weena.
Sci Fi has certainly changed since the days of HGWells.

very strange future!

This story is a classic - I did expect more than a monologue, but i'm sure that was the style. I listened to it all because i wanted to know what happened - isn't that always the way of it!! Worth a listen, even if it's just for historical author reasons.

Awesome!!

Amazing book! I have listened to over and over again. The reader's voice helps me fall asleep too