H.G. Wells's *The Time Machine*: Amplifying Human Perception

I recently read H.G. Wells's famous novella, The Time Machine (1895). It stirred in me an interesting notion that may apply to a large portion of science fiction. In The Time Machine technology is used to amplify the human sensorium to cosmic /divine levels.

Let me explain. In the opening scenes of The Time Machine a bunch of fellas are sitting around, discussing theories of time with the Time Traveler. The Time Traveler suggests that time is a dimension not unlike width, breadth, and length; time is a "fourth dimension" we cannot perceive. He then makes another point: human subjects are limited to certain spatial dimensions. For example, height. We can walk north, south, east, and west as much as we like. We can't, however, move vertically to our pleasure because of gravity. We can, of course, jump, but the force of gravity pulls us down. This is where flying machines come in. Flying machines allow us to transcend that particular spatial dimension our particular embodied situation limits us to: "horizontality". In other words, the "flying machine" technology allows us to transcend a human limit, i.e. the ability to travel vertically.

The drama of The Time Machine turns on a very specific kind of technology, a time machine. What does this technology do? Not only does it allow humans to transcend their particular embedded nature in a specific time dimension, it allows them to do something else, something entirely different. It allows humans to perceive time on a vast, cosmic scale. This, I think, is the understated element of this story: the time traveler's ability to see all of time. He is able to travel far, far into the future, witness the fate of human civilization; further, he is able to witness the final fate of our planet. Put another way, he's able to perceive time as an eternal, omnipresent demi-god or god would percieve time.

And so, my suggestion is that technology is doing something very interesting in this novella: it's amplifying human potential in a vast way. This isn't, of course, all that can be said about this story. There's plenty to say about the ethics of expanding human potential. There's plenty to be said about the experience of expanding human consciousness--amplifying the human sensorium--and how that experience effects the Time Traveler (he doesn't seem to particularly enjoy the experience (i.e. the insights it affords him)). But because Wells is such an foundational writer for all of SF, I think it is important to point this out: in this story, technology expands human consciousness/perception to a god-like scale.