"The Time Machine" by H. G. Wells

I don't know why, but, I thought this had Martians in it. It doesn't. I also thought it had evil humans who think the main character's time machine should have a poison gas button, which it also doesn't. I have no idea where I got the Martians from, but I did some poking around and it turns out there are evil humans with poison gas button opinions. Just not in the original.

Basically, for whatever reason, the abridged version I read when I was like seven (which absolutely terrified me, by the way) decided it was going to add a Cold War-esque dystopian future section featuring the main character (who's never named; he's only ever called the Time Traveller) getting interrogated about his time machine. Which includes the very memorable line from one of the interrogators, "Where's the poison gas button?!" (to which the Time Traveller inwardly speculates that, had the guy been building his own time machine, he would have included a poison gas button.) Why the adaptation people decided to do that I honestly can't fathom, but they did.

And it's not like the story isn't unsettling enough on its own. First there's the whole thing with the Eloi and the Morlocks: the Eloi are a race of childlike humanoids who live peacefully in the ruins of a previous society. The narrator surmises that they're |the descendants of humanity (H. G. Wells was pretty clearly an evolutionist), who've had medical and horticultural science advance so far that they've lost all need for things like "physical labor" or "intelligence". They're dubiously sentient and very afraid of the dark|. Meanwhile, the Morlocks are |cannibalistic, subterranean humanoids who seem to be using the Eloi as livestock, may or may not have some kind of fascination with machinery, and steal the time machine for a bit|. There's all kinds of disturbing subtext in there.

And after that, |the narrator goes to the really far future. As in, far enough that the sun has turned into a red giant, plant life is now mostly green slime, and the only animal life visible is giant screaming butterflies and some kind of giant spidery antenna-y crab thing. Then he goes even farther, to an era were the sole living being aside from himself (that we know about) is a bizarre football-shaped tentacle being, which seems to act as an ambush predator of a sort|.

The story is fully sufficiently unnerving and complete without having the Time Traveller drop into a Cold War analogue, and I decry whoever abridged the story and decided making up new parts was a good idea. For shame. If you're abridging a work, your job is to make what there is shorter and easier to understand, not to add new bits.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for spookiness and |cannibalism|.

3 stars. Too evolutiony for my taste.

(Endnote: I think this is the first time travel story, and yet it managed not to be all tropey. Maybe because the guy didn't go into the past?)