On one level, The Time Machine is a straightforward satire of the society of late Victorian England. In the future year 802,701, the "Time Traveller" encounters the seemingly ideal society of the Eloi. These peaceful and playful people live in a pastoral land without industry and pollution. They share everything with one another: food, shelter, and the land. "Communism," the Time Traveller says to himself.

Victorian socialism seems to have triumphed in the far future, creating a happy and classless society. The weaknesses of the Eloi are that they are small, silly, and incapable of sophisticated abstract thought. Apparently, the comforts of their lives have shaped the evolution of the Eloi — they seem to have devolved, that is retrogressed in their physical and mental abilities.

Then, to his horror, the Time Traveller discovers the Morlocks, who live underground. They live in an industrialized world that provides...