The Time Machine

The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and the scientific romances of H.G. Wells established the foundations of modern science fiction. Wells invented time travel as a narrative device, the alien invasion as a genre, and the dystopian future as a mode of social criticism, using speculative fiction to explore class warfare, entropy, and the limits of scientific progress with an imaginative reach that defined an entire literary tradition.

Writing during the late Victorian era at the height of the British Empire, Wells, a lower-middle-class science student of T.H. Huxley, turned speculative fiction into a vehicle for social and political critique. Orson Welles's 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds caused mass panic and demonstrated the power of science fiction to penetrate public consciousness. Wells coined or popularized terms including "time machine" and "mad scientist" that became permanent fixtures of the cultural vocabulary.