SOURCE: Hollin, Jan. “The Time Machine and the Ecotopian Tradition.” Wellsian 22 (1999): 47-54.

In the following essay, Hollin discusses The Time Machine as an ecotopian novel.

In the following I should like to investigate the relationship between H. G. Wells's The Time Machine and utopian romances and utopian novels that envision an ecologically sound society and could thus be called ecotopian. I hope to demonstrate that The Time Machine is inter-linked with this literary genre because Wells addresses problems that lie at the very centre of the ecotopian discourse.

I would like to start by explaining what I mean by ecotopian writing because “ecotopian” is certainly not a widely used and well-established term. According to Krishan Kumar, William Morris's News from Nowhere (1890) can be considered as the “prototype” of ecotopian literature.¹ Contrary to technocratic anthropocentric attempts at subduing nature, Morris and his successors expressed reverence for the beauty of...