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Contemporary Reviews of Wells’s The Time Machine and MacDonald’s Phantastes
Introduction
Science fiction and fantasy literature have become increasingly popular with present-day
readers. A love of fantasy has been encouraged by works such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the
Rings or J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. The likes of George Orwell’s 1984 or Mary Shelly’s
Frankenstein have produced a menagerie of science fiction readers. Yet, each author defines
their genre differently, as they are free from the constraints of non-fiction to construct a
seemingly impossible world. There is no one set definition for science fiction or fantasy. Gregory
Benford, a science fiction novelist, attempts to explain science fiction as a “controlled way to
think and dream about the future” that combines the “attitude of science (the objective universe)
with the fears and hopes that spring from the unconscious,” which can be used to interpret
Richard Holt Hutton’s review of George MacDonald’s Phantastes (“Gregory Benford”). Poul
Anderson, a science fiction and fantasy writer, suggests that “All fantasy is fiction, in that it
deals with events that never happened, people and places that never existed. All fantasy is
realistic, in that it tells us something about the real world,” applicable to H.G. Wells’s review of
The Time Machine (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica).
Contemporary Reviews
Gregory Benford’s “In A.D. 802,701” discusses the condition of planet Earth in 802,701
A.D. as a result of modern metaphysics. Metaphysicians claim that time is “one of the most
important of the conditions of organic evolution.” Similarly, The Time Machine begins with talk
of, not three, but “four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of space, and a fourth,
time” (Wells 4). The Time Traveller seeks “experimental verification,” creating, according to
Hutton, “some hocus pocus of a machine” (Wells 7). Through metaphysics, the Time Traveller is
able to prove the existence of time travel to his guests, who, in The Time Machine claim, “it’s all
humbug” (Wells 7). He travels to the future. The Time Traveller meets the result of Earth’s
“organic evolution,” that which Hutton suggests is “the unnerving effect of a too great success in
conquering the natural resistance which the physical constitution of the world presents to our
love of ease and pleasure” In the valley of the Thames, the Time Traveller meets two groups of
futuristic humans. The first Hutton says is the vegetarian Eloi race who Hutton describes as:
Pretty and gentle creatures of silken organisations, as it were, and no particular interests
or aims, except the love of amusement, inhabiting the surface of the Earth, almost all evil
passions dead, almost all natural or physical evils overcome, with a serener atmosphere, a
brighter sun, lovelier flowers and fruits, no dangerous animals or poisonous vegetables,
no angry passions or tumultuous and grasping selfishness, and only one object of fear.
The Time Machine reflects Hutton’s review through the Time Traveller’s initial thoughts of the
Eloi. The Time Traveller states them as “pretty little people” with a “Dresden-china type of
prettiness,” suggesting that the Eloi are as gentle, pretty and dainty as Hutton recognizes them to
be (Wells 24). The Time Traveller continues on to provide a detailed description of these
features:
Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the next and cheek; there
was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears were singularly minute.
The mouths were small, with bright red, rather thin lips, and the little chins ran to a point.
The eyes were large and mild; and -- this may seem egotistic on my part -- I fancied even
then that there was a certain lack of interest I might have expected in them. (Wells 24-25)
In contrast, the Morlocks are an underground race, evolving from the mining population to
cannibalistic night lovers who live deep in a dark pit in the ground. While investigating his
surroundings, he comes face to face with his “worst fears,” the Morlocks, who he calls “wild
beasts” (Wells 35, 45). Connecting the Morlocks back to Hutton’s metaphysical concept of
“organic evolution,” the Time Traveller states:
There were three circumstances in particular which made me think that its rare
emergence above ground was the outcome of a long-continued underground habit. In the
first place, there was the bleached look common in most animals that live largely in the
dark -- the white fish of the Kentucky caves, for instance. Then those large eyes, with that
capacity for reflecting light, are common features of nocturnal things -- witness the owl
and the cat. And last of all, that evident confusion in the sunshine, that hasty yet
fumbling and awkward flight towards dark shadow, and that peculiar carriage of the head
while in the light -- all reinforced the theory of an extreme sensitiveness of the retina.
(Wells 47)
The Time Machine continues to comply with Hutton’s review, as the Time Traveller recounts his
surroundings and the valley’s calm atmosphere. The Time Traveller realizes “horses cattle,
sheep, dogs, had followed the Ichthyosaurus into extinction,” indicating that the standard
mammals have gone extinct and no longer populate the Earth (Wells 27). Instead, the Earth has
been overrun by plants, particularly “delightful” fruits “that seemed to be in season all the time I
was there -- a floury thing in a three sided husk (Wells 27). The Time Traveller is “puzzled by all
these strange fruits, and by the strange flowers I saw,” as they are unlike anything in 1895.
Hutton concludes his review by noting the impossibility of this future, as this is but a tale
dreamt up by Wells. He explains that
Before our race had reached anything like the languid grace and frivolity of the Eloi (the
surface population), it would have fallen a prey to the many competing and conflicting
energies of Nature which are always on the watch to crush out weak and languid
organisations. … If the doctrines of evolution have any truth in them at all, nothing is
more certain than that the superiority of man to nature will never endure beyond the
endurance of his fighting strength.
According to Hutton, before 802,701 A.D. Earth could reach this point in evolution, natural
selection would have eliminated the weaker race of the Eloi, who would be dominated by the
fiercer Morlocks. Natural selection is a theory by Charles Darwin, defined as the process that
brings about evolution, in which “organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive
and produce more offspring” (Lexico). There is “no trace at all in history or civilisation” of
evidence refuting the widely-accepted concept of evolution, reaffirming Hutton’s review of
Wells’s The Time Machine.
The Eclectic Review provides a positive review of George MacDonald’s Phantastes ,
suggesting that it is a “work of rare promise” that focuses predominantly on Anodos’s “dreamy
light of boyhood.” There is more than meets the eye to this “faerie romance,” though. Phantastes
is open to the interpretation of the reader, as the title page begins with a quote by MacDonald:
“In good sooth, my masters, this is no door. Yet is it a little window, that looketh upon a great
world” (MacDonald xlv). MacDonald’s quote signifies that looking through the window, we
each have a differing perception of the world, and, therefore, can each interpret Phantastes
differently. Individual experiences, values and morals shape our particular worldview. One
potential interpretation of Phantastes expands upon The Eclective Review's suggestion that the
text addresses Anodos’s boyhood. As Anodos progresses throughout the story, he undergoes his
“coming of age,” a common genre in literature and film that tells of a character's growth from
youth into adulthood. One example of this interpretation at the beginning of Phantastes is the act
of leaving the comfort of his home. Anodos awake from his nightly slumber to find that his
bedroom had transformed into Fairy Land, taking on the appearance of a forest:
My dressing-table was an old-fashioned piece of furniture of black oak, with drawers all
down the front. These were elaborately carved in foliage, of which ivy formed the chief
part. … I looked up, and saw that the branches and leaves designed upon the curtains of
my bed were slightly in motion. Not knowing what change might follow next, I thought it
high time to get up; and springing from the bed, my bare feed alighted upon a cool green
sward; and although I dressed in all haste, I found myself completing my toilet under the
boughs of a great tree. (MacDonald 7-8)
He is forced to seek his adult self and leave his home, plunged into the forest of Fairy Land. A
second example concludes the novel, as he confronts threatening giant terrorizing the land. With
him are his two brothers, who, in the end, sacrifice their lives. Following the battle, a number of
thoughts cross Anodos’s head. He is at first filled with guilt, as he claims that he, “the least
worthy, remained the sole survivor in the lists,” perhaps contributing to the death of his brothers
(MacDonald 166). Anodos’s climactic battle, not only with the giants but within himself as well
comes to an end as the shadow he had been plagued with for so long disappears. Anodos
experiences “a wonderful elevation of spirits, and began to reflect on my past life, and especially
on my combat with the giants, with such satisfaction, that I had actually to remind myself, that I
had only killed one of them; and that, but for my brothers, I should never have had the idea of
attacking them” (MacDonald 169-170). Within Anodos “Another self seemed to arise, like a
white spirit from a dead man, from the dumb and trampled self of the past” (MacDonald 176).
Anodos completes his “coming of age.”
Analysis
“SF is a controlled way to think and dream about the future. An integration of the mood
and attitude of science (the objective universe) with the fears and hopes that spring from the
unconscious. Anything that turns you and your social context, the social you, inside out.
Nightmares and visions, always outlined by the barely possible.” — Gregory Benford
Analyzing Richard Holt Hutton’s “In A.D. 802,701” in the context of Gregory Benford's
definition of science fiction, Hutton’s review revolves around not so scientific speculation of
what the human race might be like in the year 802,701 A.D. These predictions, Hutton suggests,
are simply dreamt up by Wells, as is the nature of science fiction literature. Hutton states the
central idea of Wells’s dream:
The central idea of this dream is, then, the unnerving effect of a too great success in
conquering the natural resistance which the physical constitution of the world presents to
our love of ease and pleasure. Let a race which has learned to serve, and to serve
efficiently, and has lost the physical equality with its masters by the conditions of its
servitude, coexist with a race that has secured all the advantages of superior organisation,
and the former will gradually recover, by its energetic habits, at least some of the
advantages which it has lost, and will unite with them the cruel and selfish spirit which
servitude breeds.
The Time Machine posits Wells’s unconscious dreams and their corresponding fears for the
future, complying with Benford’s definition of science fiction that combines “the mood and
attitude of science … with the fears and hopes that spring from the unconscious.”
“All fantasy is fiction, in that it deals with events that never happened, people and places
that never existed. All fantasy is realistic, in that it tells us something about the real world.
Moreover, fantasy is fun. It’s entertainment.” — Poul Anderson
Analyzing The Eclectic Review’s review of Phantastes in the context of Poul Anderson’s
definition of fantasy, The Eclectic Review complies with Anderson’s fantasy definition. The
Eclectic review suggests that although Phantastes focuses predominantly around Anodos’s
boyhood, the novel can be viewed through a number of lenses depending on a person’s particular
worldview, as suggested by MacDonald’s quote at the beginning of chapter 1: “In good sooth,
my masters, this is no door. Yet is it a little window, that looketh upon a great world”
(MacDonald xlv). One possible interpretation of the text is Phantastes as a “coming of age”
novel. The transition of child to adult is part of every child’s life in the real world, whether it be
as fantastical as Anodos’s or not. Clearly real people are not fighting giants, as fantasy,
according to Anderson, “deals with events that never happened, people and places that never
existed.” Nonetheless, they undergo their own “coming of age.”
Personal Reviews
H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine is a science fiction novella that follows the Time
Traveller through time and in his explorations of the future. The invention of a time machine
allows experimentation with evolution, testing the boundaries of what awaits humanity in the
year 802,701 A.D. Wells was one of the first science fiction writers to popularize the possibility
of the time machine, permitting humans to travel through time and space. The Time Machine has
inspired some of the greatest current day science fiction, including, not only literature, but
television shows such as Doctor Who , which features a mad-man in a time-traveling police box
from the 1920s. Without Doctor Who , what would I do with my life? I owe many hours of
procrastination to H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine.
George MacDonald’s Phantates is a “faerie romance” novel that discusses a young man’s
“coming of age” through fantastic experiences in Fairy Land. Although MacDonald’s writing is
not the most becoming to present day readers, as Phantastes is none other than a string of events
with absolutely no plot, his writing served as the inspiration for notable works and their authors,
including C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of
the Rings , truly increasing popularity for fantasy literature and, even more so, movies on the big
screen. With ever progressing technology, phenomenal graphics have allowed the impossible to
come alive and bestow a love of fantasy across a wider audience. Thank you, George
MacDonald. We owe it all to you.
Work Cited
“Gregory Benford.” Gregory Benford | Edge.org , Edge Foundation, Inc, 1 Jan. 1970,
www.edge.org/memberbio/gregory_benford.
MacDonald, George. Phantastes . Winged Lion Press, 2017.
“Natural Selection.” Lexico Dictionaries | English , Lexico Dictionaries,
www.lexico.com/en/definition/natural_selection.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Poul Anderson.” Encyclopædia Britannica ,
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/biography/Poul-Anderson.
Wells, H. G. The Time Machine . Penguin Classics, 2007