Could we call H. G. Wells 'The Time Machine' an early parable of dysgenics?

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Or not? ELOI and MORLOCKS are just future us! It's not really a damnation of breeding politics (ala Idiocracy), IIRC, but how did futures us get to be Eloi/Morlocks? Does it say? Evolution? McGuffination? Or "They just did, okay"?

Do most tales in which future humanity is DAMNED and STUPID and WRONG specify why futures us are intractably useless? Not so much why as HOW this happened?

Also, according to this issue of WIRED I just read, it's a retelling of postcolonial politics. ????

Abbott, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 14:46 (fifteen years ago) link

I should note Wells I srsly doubt Wells intended this, as a wicked progressive dude in many ways. (I like the dude. He's sexy, too – I saw some documentary about him that somehow managed to get color footage and he looked just like Malcolm McDowell!)

Abbott, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 14:46 (fifteen years ago) link

But maybe he was classic turn-of-century secret racists????

Abbott, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 14:47 (fifteen years ago) link

hope keith's writing code to speed up doing other people's assignments for them

DG, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 14:47 (fifteen years ago) link

hahahahaha

Abbott, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 14:49 (fifteen years ago) link

I guess I didn't want the third chapter of the book re-read to me, just...a lot of future stuff is like 'OMG HUMANS TURNED DUMB.' The underlying message being 'OMG WE ARE DAMNED RIGHT NOW.' See: every other episode of 'The Twilight Zone.'

Abbott, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 14:50 (fifteen years ago) link

But you'd think eloi/morlocks...happened...over eons...by...evltion, yeah. But selective breeding or not?

Abbott, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 14:55 (fifteen years ago) link

NB this is just me thinkin baout eloi...I don't have homework from '19th Century Post-Colonial Literature.' 1. Thank god bcz if I ever have to read Heart of Darkness again I'm gonna send someone on THEIR own hellish journey to Kurtz and 2. Thank god I'm no longer a lit major. I got really tired of pulling any old thing out of my ass and getting an A for writing it in a lucid and pleasing fashion. Fuuuccckkk, man.

Abbott, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 14:57 (fifteen years ago) link

I should note Wells I srsly doubt Wells intended this, as a wicked progressive dude in many ways

Some of old HG's ideas were a little, errrrrrrrrr, less than liberal, shall we say

Tom D., Tuesday, 2 September 2008 15:03 (fifteen years ago) link

Okay yeah maybe "liking group sex" doesn't make a body progressive.

Abbott, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 15:06 (fifteen years ago) link

I thought it was all just a giant metaphor for class warfare?

Masonic Boom, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 15:06 (fifteen years ago) link

His politics were progressive but for a bit of a fondness for eugenics

Tom D., Tuesday, 2 September 2008 15:07 (fifteen years ago) link

Therefore he favoured suffrage to be limited to scientists, organisers, engineers, and others of merit, though he believed citizens should have as much freedom as possible without restricting the freedom of others....Wells believed in the theory of eugenics. In 1904 he discussed a survey paper by Francis Galton, co-founder of eugenics, saying "I believe .. It is in the sterilisation of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies."

Okay I wasn't too far off base. Why didn't that documentary about him & Jack the Ripper tell me this?

Abbott, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 15:08 (fifteen years ago) link

This is what happens when you get up and take medicine that makes you wired and drink coffee that makes you wired and you read WIRED magazine while you smoke on your front porch and then post your first thoughts of the day on ILX.

Abbott, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 15:09 (fifteen years ago) link

Ahm WIRED

Abbott, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 15:09 (fifteen years ago) link

Those upper class ladies couldn't keep their hands off him, of course

Tom D., Tuesday, 2 September 2008 15:09 (fifteen years ago) link

/\ /\ This is why we love you, Abbott!

x-post

Masonic Boom, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 15:10 (fifteen years ago) link

The only funny thing I've seen on Family Guy was a take-off on the start of Back to the Future 2. "Marty! There's a problem with your daughter!" In the Delorian, Doc says, "She married a black man!" And Marty is like, "Uh...Doc...that's really not cool. I don't think I'm okay with you anymore."

Abbott, Tuesday, 2 September 2008 15:12 (fifteen years ago) link

three years pass...

Was watching this movie over the weekend, and you know the bit where he arrives in 1966, and there's just about to be a nuclear/final destruction?

He's talking to his friend's son just before the people go into the bunker, and in the window of the supermarket there's an item labelled as "The latest in tubeless television screens" and whaddayaknow, there's an Ipad. A white one.

Mark G, Tuesday, 8 May 2012 14:33 (eleven years ago) link

I liked the episode of Wishbone where they're looking at a gallery of human inventions, and it ends with a PC, and then some matte black prism that looks like the thing on the cover of Presence. The future!

Dale, dale, dale (Abbbottt), Wednesday, 9 May 2012 02:12 (eleven years ago) link

(the Wishbone ep was covering the novel of The Time Machine)

Dale, dale, dale (Abbbottt), Wednesday, 9 May 2012 02:14 (eleven years ago) link


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