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For discussing the first three chapters of the book. Please be aware if you have not finished these chapters spoilers may be posted here.

I read this as a teen and don't remember much of it. I did see the older movie of it, and loved that. It's rather strange that he refers to the characters by their roles in society rather than names. Yes, there are some names, but very few when compared to the number of characters.

The setting is so well described, yet the characters are not fully developed. It's as if scene and plot are more important than the characters. I feel the story really depicts changes in science that must have seemed radical at the time.

It will be interesting to see how I feel about this work after reading it as an adult.

Yes, Deborah. The characters themselves don't seem very important. Only the fact that there is a group of men of intellectual and somewhat varied perspective, who seem to have a familiarity with each other. But I enjoyed this chapter, as the Time Traveler sets out his concept of time as the Fourth dimension and find it an interesting, even amusing (poor Filby), choice as the set up for an adventure story. Almost as if Wells were trying to add a realism to the adventure that would be "recounted."

Perhaps, In a way, it lends itself to fostering conversations in the life of his readers, as they take up, not merely the tale of the adventure, but also the concepts of Time Travel and potential futures.

However, it's the part I completely forgot. Remembering only the adventure itself. Funny.

I think that the use of descriptives rather than of names is meant to convey a need for secrecy or concealment of identity, that what we are being told was true but could not be made "public".

I also noted the use of the narrator within another narration-that is the first narrator sets the stage, and then the Time Traveller takes over as narrator in chapter 3. I believe the same device was used in Frankenstein and wonder if this was a common way to present a 'Tall Tale'.

I've never read this novel before although I've come across references to it or to its film versions frequently (most recently in a "Big Bang Theory" episode). I'm looking forward to reading the original.

Interesting. I didn't put the lack of names with secrecy. Instead I thought he was making comments about the different roles in society.

Deborah- that's what I took from it, but it serves both purposes and maybe was intended as such.

I know I've read other things from this time period, both French and English, where the character names were deliberately left unstated, though. More like Mr. B or M. ___. In these cases it definitely seems like a device to lend mystery and authenticity to the fiction. As though to cloak the true identity of the "real" persons involved.

Frances wrote: "I also noted the use of the narrator within another narration-that is the first narrator sets the stage, and then the Time Traveller takes over as narrator in chapter 3. I believe the same device was used in Frankenstein and wonder if this was a common way to present a 'Tall Tale'."

The narration within narration was very common in ghost stories, of which I always have a volume on my night table. We noted it in Turn of the Screw also. I wonder if it was used here to insert the possibility of an unreliable narrator. Often it was used because the original narrator had died at or after the end of his tale, and the recent narrator had found his journal or diary. We're unaware until the end that the narrator had died.

I love the way Wells gets around impenetrable objects, slipping through them like smoke due to his great speed. Yet he observes that his building has disintegrated (improving his view), the change of climate, creation/destruction of future cities, etc. Until finally he contemplates stopping... “The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance in the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So long as I travelled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely mattered; I was, so to speak, attenuated—was slipping like a vapour through the interstices of intervening substances! But to come to a stop involved the jamming of myself, molecule by molecule, into whatever lay in my way;�

It's similar to "teleportation," used later in the Star Trek TV series, where your body was moved one molecule at a time into a different place.

There was a very faithful film made of this in 1960, with one of my early heartthrobs, Rod Taylor. The last scene is haunting and heartbreaking.

The division into 2 species on earth was also used in Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle (1963.) The apes in that novel inhabit a society more advanced than the humans. However, in The Time Machine, neither species has done well.

That's interesting. I didn't know Planet of the Apes was based on a novel. Something to add to the pile!

Renee wrote: "That's interesting. I didn't know Planet of the Apes was based on a novel. Something to add to the pile!"

It got mixed reviews by book critics, but it might be a letdown for you after 50 years of adaptations and imitations. There's also a framing narration with a surprise ending, a little different from the film.