The Time Machine (Penguin Modern Classics)

Having embarked on an astonishing journey into the future, the Time Traveller finds himself transported in his Time Machine to a far-distant but dying world where humanity is divided into two classes: the graceful, idle Eloi who inhabit the idyllic surface of the world, and the Morlocks, ugly nocturnal creatures, who live and work underground. In THE TIME MACHINE, Wells created one of the first and finest science fiction stories: a social allegory that is both vivid and perturbing.

H. G. Wells was a professional writer and journalist, who published more than a hundred books, including novels, histories, essays and programmes for world regeneration. Wells's prophetic imagination was first displayed in pioneering works of science fiction, but later he became an apostle of socialism, science and progress. His controversial views on sexual equality and the shape of a truly developed nation remain directly relevant to our world today. He was, in Bertrand Russell's words, 'an important liberator of thought and action'.