So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers... n n At a Victorian dinner party, in Richmond, London, the Time Traveller returns to tell his extraordinary tale of mankinds future in the year 802,701 AD. It is a dystopian vision of Darwinian evolution, with humans split into an above-ground species of Eloi, and their troglodyte brothers. n n The first book H. G. Wells published, The Time Machine is a scientific romance that helped invent the genre of science fiction and the time travel story. Even before its serialisation had finished in the spring of 1895, Wells had been declared a man of genius, and the book heralded a fifty year career of a major cultural and political controversialist. It is a sardonic rejection of Victorian ideals of progress and improvement and a detailed satirical commentary on the Decadent n culture of the 1890s. n n This edition features a contextual introduction, detailed explanatory notes, and two essays Wells wrote just prior to the publication of his first book. n