The Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells are two of my favourite books. Both are rather short, you could read The Time Machine in an afternoon as I have several times, and The Island Of Doctor Moreau is not much longer. Now I could try to talk about the substance of either of them, because both are rich and worthwhile pieces of writing that plenty of people who are far more qualified and intelligent than me have studied and written about. Both are crucial in the development of what we would call science-fiction and incredibly influential. Themes and imagery and ideas from these (and all of H. G. Wells’ works, but these are the only ones I own copies of) books come up over and over and over again in other books and films to this day. However, those other people are far more qualified and intelligent than me, and I don’t think I have any unusual insights or takes either, so instead I think I’ll just talk about why these two books in particular are special to me.
There was a period of time at school where I had no real friends, during my second and into the third year of secondary school, so around the age of 12/ 13. There was a group of kids I would hang out with, and the two friends I have (maybe, I hardly speak to them but we did all go on a trip together last summer and were thinking about doing the same this year) to this day I met through hanging out with this group, but I didn’t really get along well with any of them at first. It was just preferable to be around them than to do laps of the building for an hour every lunch break. Anyway they liked to hang out in the library, and so being around books all the time I was reading quite often during that period. I was also borrowing books and reading every night at home, as I’ve tried to start doing again recently.
Well, one of the books I remember seeing on the shelf was The Time Machine, and I loved it. I picked it up during the morning break, and then I skipped lunch later that day to read it for the whole hour, and finished it that evening at home. It was just an incredibly /comfy/ reading experience, something about the slightly antiquated Victorian English it was written in (the book was published in the late 1800s) along with the subject matter and the way the story was framed just made it a pleasure to read. The Island of Doctor Moreau was the exact same, and in particular that image of this lonely scientist on his own island thousands of miles from civilisation has stuck with me to this day. Both stories really draw you in to a certain time period, in a way that a book or film from more modern times with a similar setting cannot.
See H. G. Wells was alive at a time when we knew so much less about the nature of matter and reality, most of what we understand about the brain was discovered in the 20th century, the Rutherford atomic model hadn’t been proven accurate, and related to the subject of this book ideas on the nature of time were rather different from the scientific consensus today, etc etc. This period in scientific history is romanticised today not just by me but by a lot of people I think, instead of the sleek shiny white halls that come to mind when you think of a modern research facility, people see men with moustaches tinkering away with rudimentary devices trying to grasp onto some piece of the unknown that surrounded everyone. Reading these books really brings you into that world. In fact I believe that the main reason behind the appeal of the steampunk visual style/ aesthetic to so many people is because of this in part.
There’s a similar feeling a lot of people have regarding the age of exploration and the colonial era, in that there’s something very appealing about conquering and mapping out the great unknown. So a lot of people almost unconsciously gravitate to various superficial things which in their mind represent this time period. People love pith helmets, those long line formation style military coats, ships of the line, and so on. Not because these things are just universally visually appealing to people, even though it might feel like they are, but because of the context within which those things were used. It’s the same for the sciences in the 19th and very early 20th century, even if I’m wrong about this and most of the discoveries we kind of associate with this period were actually from before or after that doesn’t really matter. Similar to how so frequently in media portraying the late roman republic for example the legionaries are wearing lorica segmentata, even though that armour wasn’t developed until much later in history it doesn’t matter because it’s become such a huge symbol of Rome you have to include it.
In fact this kind of feeling, of a world which is still unknown and mysterious is one of the reasons I wanted to read Herodotus’ Histories. I can definitely say that I personally have a certain longing for a time when the world was still strange, and I know that there are at least some people who feel similarly. There’s this sentiment you see, on r9k especially, “born too late to explore the new world, born too early to explore the stars”. The thing is, I am self aware enough to appreciate that someone of my temperament and ability would probably not have been one of the great explorers of the past. I’m not a trailblazer, I’m a shut in.
Changing subject now, the idea of divergent evolutionary paths of humanity leading to the soft and passive Eloi on the one hand and the vulgar brutish Morlocks on the other in The Time Machine is genuinely disturbing to think about. It certainly is a particularly british idea as well I believe, as the class differences are much more stark than in other European/ western countries. I think there are real phenotypic differences between the working class and the rest of the population here, and I think that this divergence started during the industrial revolution. If you look at “anglo” populations in the former colonies like Canada, Australia, The eastern coast of the US, and New Zealand you don’t see this as much, as these places were settled before Britain industrialised for the most part. Of course all these places have since industrialised as well, as has most of the world, but I think the conditions of the industrial revolution in England (as it was the first) were worse for the workers than anywhere else. Other places didn’t have to go through all the experimentation that happened here. I could be completely wrong, but that is how it has always seemed to me.
I don’t think that H. G. Wells really believed that this trend would continue until two separate species of human developed, the Eloi and Morlocks are clearly there as allegory, but the point is well made. There’s a line in The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell (another book in the pile) talking about class in Britain or at least England, which puts it quite well.
the essential point about the English class-system is that it is not entirely explicable in terms of money. Roughly speaking it is a money-stratification, but it is also interpenetrated by a sort of shadowy caste-system
It’s so well put, and it’s something that you have to live amongst to really pick up on I think. Class, this shadowy sort that he speaks of, penetrates through to every area of life here. You develop a sort of sense for it, you can tell within seconds roughly where someone new you meet stands in this complex social order after a while. The one thing that seems to be causing a shift is large scale immigration, because these newer people even though a lot of them are from other European countries aren’t as attuned to it. As for those from “further afield”, they’re completely oblivious. They’ve also formed into a kind of underclass, which has it’s own effect on this ill defined structure that is of course hard to specify but clearly present.
This sort of thing is much more pronounced in the cities as well, which again makes sense if you see the industrial revolution as a major factor in the coming about of it. In more rural areas class is much more simple to understand, it really does just seem to be economic. The same goes for the other “anglo” countries, like Canada or Australia. Some people have nice houses and can afford to send their children to private school for example and others can’t, but the people are the same. When you go into a shop or whatever in a town in Dorset there will be both of those kinds of people but it’d be harder to initially distinguish them. You’d actually need to get to know these people to find out which was which, in London or Leeds or Sheffield you’d know immediately. Now of course in the countryside you also have the aristocracy many of whom have estates thousands of acres in size, but they’re a tiny percentage of the population. I’m just talking about the “normal people” you see day to day.
Now this system does seem to be ever so slowly breaking down, in part because of immigration as I was saying, but for several reasons. I really do mean slowly though, as I said I think in certain areas there is a biological difference between these “castes”, almost like the very earliest stages of the formation of separate ethnic groups. I think that it’s class intermixing is less taboo than ever before though, and so this could be reversed. Americanisation is another big factor certainly, a lot of the things that people use to define and divide themselves are now coming from a place where this specific kind of class division doesn’t exist. It is a slow process though, and in fact in a small way I might be a part of that process. My mum was from a pretty well off middle class background, and my dad was born to a very working class family. In fact I think that being in this weird in-between position is one of the many reasons I’ve always felt a little alienated.
Of my two close friends, one is quite middle class like my mother was growing up and my uncle (her brother) is today, and the other is from a more working class background. I don’t think they would have stayed in contact with one another if not for me functioning almost as a go-between in this friendship. All their other friends are from similar backgrounds from what I can tell. I’m always the one who has to arrange stuff between the three of us, and sure we all get along really well when together but there’s some kind of resistance before that point. I’m pretty much convinced I care about their friendship more than they care about mine, and certainly more than they care about one another’s. That’s not entirely because of class though, it only plays a role, but also because as I said they have other friends and I don’t.
Speaking of alienation though, I’ll try to get back on track with this post. So I’ve written before about how I’ve always had a romanticised view of the loner/ hermit figure or archetype. I can’t find the particular post to link, but it’s come up a few times. I think that in a way I always sort of knew I would end up quite isolated and in fact part of me wanted it to happen. Those kinds of characters, a perfect example being Doctor Moreau, always seemed “cool” and intriguing to me as a kid. I’m not sure why that is, maybe I admire those characters and people in real life who aren’t reliant on anyone else. Or maybe it’s because I already expected to end up alone and I was unconsciously forming a “cope” around it. “I may end up without any friends or anyone who loves me, but look at all these cool characters in novels and films who also don’t have those things”.
I just can’t say, but I do know that the character of Doctor Moreau, even though he himself isn’t actually present for roughly half of the novel, is the character of this kind I felt this about the most. I just thought he was fucking cool, this genius scientist who fled his academic position to do his crazy experiments on an island in the South Pacific (for some reason I always thought it was the South Atlantic until checking today), away from civilisation and other people. He does have his assistant Montgomery, and the beast people, but you get my point. There’s a part fairly on that is really memorable for me, and hopefully it’ll help illustrate what it is that appealed to me.
Just after the main character, Edward Prendick, arrives on the island. He’s taken to the compound that Moreau and Montgomery live in, the creepy implication that there’s something they need to protect against being deliberate I’m sure, and they take out a bottle of Brandy and some biscuits to share. The description of the apartment within the compound that Prendick stays in further adds to the /comfy/ vibe, old scientific books strewn across the place, a hammock, a chair by the window if I remember correctly. Picture it in your head, what you see is like an image that would be posted in a /comfy/ thread on /r9k/ or /wg/.
Now of course Doctor Moreau is not meant to be a relatable or sympathetic character, he’s not exactly the antagonist of the story but he’s clearly shown to be engaging in some rather cruel experiments which some of the beast people (the products of these experiments) resent him for. Nevertheless I did find myself drawn to the character, and I’ve re-read this book multiple times because I so enjoy his story. I will almost certainly read it again, this and The Time Machine, which is why I will be keeping hold of these two books and not throwing them away.
Ramblings of a neurotic mess 