The Time Machine

H.G. Wells | Chapters 1–2

Opening the Door to Tomorrow

Essential Question for Today

Why do we tell stories about the future when we're really talking about today?

You Wake Up 100 Years From Now.

It's 2125. No warning. No map. No instructions.

What do you HOPE to find?

Climate change reversed?
Technology that ended inequality?
Your culture and language still thriving?

What do you FEAR finding?

The same problems, just bigger?
That some people "won" the future and others didn't?
That your community isn't in the picture at all?

Turn & Talk — 90 seconds

Tell your partner: one hope, one fear. Then ask each other — who do you think gets to decide what that future looks like?

What This Unit Is Really About

Science fiction has always been about the present, disguised as the future

Essential Question 1

Why do we tell stories about the future when we're really talking about today?

Essential Question 2

Who gets to imagine the future — and why does it matter who's doing the imagining?

The Time Machine (1895) → Metropolis (1927) → Black Panther (2018)

123 years apart — but all three texts are asking the same questions.

The Setup: An Unusual Dinner Party

Chapter 1 — London, 1895

What Wells Wrote

Wealthy men gathered at a private dinner
The host: an inventor Wells calls the "Time Traveller" — no real name
His audience: a Doctor, a Psychologist, an Editor
He has a wild idea. They're skeptical.

Think of It Like...

A TED Talk where the speaker goes totally off-script
A tech founder pitching investors who don't want to believe
A controversial podcast with skeptical panelists
Trying to convince the group chat about something they've already decided

Modern Parallel

The Time Traveller is trying to get smart, educated people to believe something they don't want to believe. Think: the first person who said streaming would kill movie theaters, or that social media would change elections. Who listened? Who didn't? Why?

Who's at the Table — and Who Isn't

This question will follow us through the entire unit

Who IS at Wells' Dinner Party?

Wealthy white men
Professionals with social status and influence
People who are very comfortable in their world
People who have never had to worry about the future

Who Is MISSING?

Women
The servants who cooked and served the dinner
People from Britain's colonized nations
Anyone without money or status

Quick Discussion — 2 Minutes

Why does it matter who's in the room when someone imagines the future?
If only certain people design the future — what might they forget to include? What might they not even know is missing?

TIMING: ~7 minutes (3 min building the two columns + 2-min timer + 2 min whole-class share). This is a pivotal slide — worth the time. If you need to recover minutes later, trim Slide 13 discussion instead of this one. This slide plants the seed for Afrofuturism. Don't over-explain it yet — let students arrive at the idea themselves. The key insight: when only a narrow group imagines the future, that future tends to work well for them and poorly for everyone else. This directly sets up why Black Panther is a different kind of science fiction — Wakanda is a Black African future imagined BY Black creators, not imagined FOR them. Plant this seed now. You'll harvest it in Week 3. Don't villainize Wells. He was progressive for his era in many ways. But his limitations reflect his world — and that's exactly the point.

The Big Idea: Time Is Just Another Direction

"There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it."
— H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

Wells' Argument: We move through space in three directions — left/right, forward/back, up/down. Time is just a fourth direction. And we're already moving through it...

...at exactly 1 second per second.

So — why couldn't something move through time faster? Or backward?

Not Bad for 1895

Einstein's theory of relativity — which actually involves time dilation — came ten years later. Wells was guessing, but in the right direction. This is science fiction doing what it does best: asking "what if?" before science has the answer.

Technology Already Warps Our Sense of Time

Wells was onto something we live with every day

Call out the one that fits your life — we'll mark it on the board:

Instagram "Memories"
The past interrupts your present

Binge-Watching
4 hours gone. Where did they go?

Calling Home
Same conversation, 12 time zones apart

AI Nostalgia Filters
"What you'd look like in 1960"

Wells' Real Question

"What if we could see the consequences of our choices before we make them?"

The Demonstration: Does Seeing Mean Believing?

Chapter 1 — the moment the room changes

The Time Traveller produces a small, delicate model — ivory and crystal
He doesn't activate it himself — he hands the lever to the Psychologist
The Psychologist pushes the lever
The model vanishes. The room goes silent. Then the arguments start.

Team Skeptic Says...

"It's a trick"
"There must be a rational explanation"
"Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof"

Team Believer Says...

"I saw it vanish with my own eyes"
"Why would he go to this trouble to fake it?"
"We barely understand the universe"

Quick Poll — No Wrong Answers

You're at the dinner. You just watched the model vanish. Stand up if you're Team Believer. Stay seated if you're Team Skeptic. Be ready to give one reason.

TIMING: ~7 minutes (3 min fragments + physical poll + 3 min discussion). The stand-up poll is a good kinesthetic reset at roughly the class midpoint — do not skip it even if time is tight. The discussion after the poll should stay focused: one Skeptic speaks, one Believer speaks, you summarize. Do the physical poll — it breaks the rhythm and gets students into their bodies. After the poll, ask a Skeptic and a Believer to justify their position. Then: "What would it take to change your mind?" This is actually a media literacy question about evidence and persuasion that connects directly to today's information environment. Note the clever detail: the Time Traveller lets someone ELSE push the lever, so no one can accuse him of faking it. That's shrewd design — and worth naming.

Who Controls New Technology?

A question Wells hides in the dinner party — still urgent today

The Time Traveller gives the controls to someone else. He still gets the blame when no one believes him.

In Wells' world: Wealthy men at dinner tables decided what science was for — and who the future was for.

In our world: A small number of engineers and executives make decisions that affect billions of people who had no say.

The pattern: The people building the future are rarely the people most affected by it.

Discussion — 2 Minutes

Name one piece of technology that changed your daily life. Then ask: Who decided you needed it? Did you have a say? Did your community benefit — or get left behind?

Chapter 2: He's Back — and He's Wrecked

One week later. Something happened.

What the Guests See

He limps in, covered in dust and dried blood
His clothes are torn. He looks exhausted.
He barely speaks — just wants food first
Then: "I want to tell it. Badly."

What This Tells Us

He's been somewhere real
The future left visible marks on him
He's desperate to be believed
But the audience still wants a simple explanation

"I want to tell it. Badly. But not now. Not until I've had something to eat."
— The Time Traveller, Chapter 2

He claims to have traveled to the year 802,701 AD. The guests still want a rational explanation.

TIMING: ~5 minutes. No discussion timer here — this is a close-reading moment. Read the quote aloud yourself, slowly. Pause after "Badly." before continuing. That pause does more than any explanation. The detail that he wants food first is crucial — it grounds the fantastical in something bodily and real. His physical condition is proof that something happened, yet the audience's skepticism persists even in the face of visible evidence. This is Wells' point: the establishment resists disruption even when disruption walks through the door and bleeds on their carpet. The specific year — 802,701 — is chosen because it's so far away Wells can imagine anything he wants. It also represents a span of time so vast it becomes a comment on deep historical time, not just personal adventure.

When Story Is More Powerful Than Proof

Essential Question

"How do the stories we tell about the future shape the choices we make today?"

The Time Traveller has no photographs. No data. No documentation. He just has a story. And the audience listens anyway.

Fiction Doing This Right Now

Don't Look Up — the comet is climate change
The Last of Us — pandemic anxiety made personal
Squid Game — debt and global inequality
Silo / Severance — corporate control of reality

Real Question

Why do people watch dystopian shows about climate disaster and then ignore the actual climate news?

What does fiction do that facts can't?

TIMING: ~5 minutes. This slide can be shortened to 3 minutes if you're running behind — present the examples quickly and ask the "what does fiction do that facts can't?" question as a rhetorical beat rather than a full discussion. It still lands. Save the full discussion version for a day when you have more breathing room. Students in Generation Z are actually very sophisticated about this, even without the vocabulary. Push them to articulate why: story gives you a character to identify with, story makes abstract problems feel personal, story creates emotional investment before intellectual engagement. Wells understood this — that's why he wrote fiction about science instead of scientific papers. The question "what does fiction do that facts can't?" is also a media literacy question. Linger here if the room is engaged.

Reading Between the Lines

Wells hides his social critique in plain sight

The dinner party guests are curious about the future — but they're never worried about it.

Why They're Not Worried

They're wealthy, educated, and in control. Whatever the future holds, it will probably be arranged for people like them. It always has been. They assume it always will be.

Wells' Setup: These comfortable men will be the ancestors of the future society. Ask yourself: what kind of future do you build when you're never afraid of it?

Sound Familiar?

Today's billionaires build private bunkers, buy remote land, and plan to leave Earth — while the rest of the world deals with the consequences of the systems they built. Wells is describing that same logic in 1895.

TIMING: ~5 minutes. No timer here — this is a lecture moment with short rhetorical questions. Reveal each fragment, pause briefly for student reactions, keep moving. The Morlock question at the end ("who do you think runs things in the dark?") is a cliff-hanger — don't answer it. This is the slide that connects to the Eloi in Chapters 3–5. When the Eloi arrive, students should recognize these dinner party guests in them — beautiful, idle, comfortable, and completely unprepared for what the world has become. Wells is saying: this complacency leads somewhere. The "bunker billionaire" parallel is recent enough that students will have seen it — you don't need to name specific individuals, the concept is well-known. Ask: "Who do you think the Morlocks might represent?" — students will often guess workers, which is exactly right.

The Same Story, Three Different Futures

How our three texts answer the same questions

The Time Machine
1895

Class inequality left unchecked until humanity literally splits into two separate species.

The elite become beautiful and helpless. The workers become something terrifying.

Metropolis
1927

Workers live underground, running machines they'll never benefit from. The elite live above in towers and gardens.

The class divide made literal — written into architecture.

Black Panther
2018

What if the future wasn't imagined for Black people or about Black people — but by Black people, on their own terms?

A different kind of science fiction entirely.

The Unit's Central Question

Who gets to imagine the future — and why does it matter who's doing the imagining?

TIMING: ~5 minutes. Reveal each column as a fragment. Brief comment on each — 30–40 seconds per column. Then the essential question at the bottom as a rhetorical close, not a discussion prompt. If time is tight, this slide can be cut to 3 minutes by presenting all three columns at once and spending 2 minutes on the essential question only. Spend time on the Black Panther column — students are likely most familiar with it, and it reframes the previous texts. The word "Afrofuturism" doesn't need to appear yet. Let students articulate the idea themselves ("so Black Panther is saying Black people can imagine their own future without asking permission?") before giving them the term. That discovery is far more powerful than a definition. The essential question here should feel like something they now genuinely want to answer.

Let's Talk: Four Questions Worth Arguing About

Choose one — and be ready to defend your thinking, not just summarize it

Why does Wells start with skeptical characters? Why not start with people who believe? What does that choice tell us about his real audience?
The dinner party is comfortable and safe. Why would Wells make the opening feel that cozy — before everything goes wrong?
What technology today would make people as skeptical as Wells' audience? Why do we resist new ideas — especially when they challenge things we benefit from?
If you could send one message back to 1895, what would it be? And honestly — would anyone there listen to you?

Discussion Format

Pick your question. 2 minutes with a partner. Then share with the class — don't summarize your conversation. Make an argument.

TIMING: ~10 minutes (1 min choosing + 2-min timer + 5 min whole-class share-back + 2 min synthesis). This is your main whole-class discussion. Aim for 3–4 different student voices before you close. If one question dominates, note the others for next class: "We'll return to Question 3 when we meet the Eloi." TIME-SAVING OPTION: If you are more than 5 minutes behind, reduce pair discussion to 90 seconds and whole-class share-back to 3 minutes. The journal (Slide 15) must not be cut — protect those 8 minutes. Question 4 is the most accessible for reluctant readers — it requires genuine interpretation (what do you think the 19th century got wrong?) in a personal, imaginative format. Question 1 is the most analytically demanding. If students are stuck on Q1, ask: "Is Wells writing for people who already believe in time travel — or for people who are skeptical, just like the dinner guests?" This usually unlocks the rhetorical strategy insight. "Make an argument, not a summary" is a key instruction that is worth repeating out loud before discussion starts.

Your Voice: Journal Entry

No wrong answers. Authentic thinking counts more than perfect sentences.

Journal — 8 Minutes — Paper and Pen

Laptops closed. Write in your notebook.

Write about a time when you had something important to say — and no one believed you, or no one listened. It could be with your family, friends, online, or in a class.

How did that feel?
What strategies worked — and which ones didn't?
Did it matter who the audience was? Would different people have listened?

Connection: The Time Traveller faces this same problem in every chapter. Keep this entry — we'll return to it when we finish Black Panther.

TIMING: ~10 minutes (30 sec instruction + 8-min timer + 90 sec wrap). This must be protected — do not let earlier slides eat into it. The journal is the emotional core of the lesson. If you arrive here with only 6 minutes before the bell, run it anyway for 5 minutes and extend it as a home task. Laptops stay closed. Students write by hand — the physical act of writing without a screen supports the reflective tone this prompt needs. Walk the room quietly during the timer. If students are stuck, the sentence starter "There was one time when I knew something was true but nobody took it seriously..." often helps. The instruction to keep the entry is important — in the final week of the unit, students will read it back and connect their experience to Erik Killmonger's need to be heard in Black Panther. This is the empathy bridge that holds the whole unit together. Honor whatever students write — reluctant writers often produce their most honest work in journal formats.

Your Challenge Before Next Class

Taking the big ideas out of this room

The Task

Find one piece of current media — movie, show, game, anime, manhwa, TikTok series, song, anything — that uses a "what if" scenario to comment on a real problem happening in the world right now.

Be Ready to Tell Us

What is the "what if"?
What real problem is it actually about?
Who made it — and who do you think it's made for?

Ideas to Get You Started

Severance, Silo, Fallout, The Bear
Dystopian anime or manhwa
A concept album or music video
Any game with social commentary

There is no bad choice. The only requirement: you can explain the connection.

TIMING: ~3 minutes. Read the task aloud clearly, show the examples column as a prompt not a constraint, and emphasize the one requirement: you can explain the connection. Collect examples at the start of next class — 2 minutes of quick-fire sharing before the lesson begins. Keep a running list of student examples — they'll be genuinely useful for future class discussions and often reveal things about student anxieties you wouldn't otherwise hear. The "who made it and who is it for?" question is the crucial one: it plants the authorship question that becomes central to Afrofuturism. Some students may arrive with examples from languages or cultural contexts you're unfamiliar with — honor that, and let other students explain. Those moments of teaching each other are some of the richest in a unit like this.

Next Class: The Future Is Stranger Than You Think

Chapters 3–5 — the Time Traveller arrives in 802,701 AD

The Eloi

Beautiful. Gentle. Childlike. Humanity's descendants in the far future.

But something is wrong. They never work. They never build. They never fight back.

Why?

Something in the Dark

The world seems perfect on the surface.

It isn't.

Someone is running things in the dark. And the Eloi know it.

They just don't talk about it.

Think About This Before Next Class

What kind of future would make the Victorian upper class uncomfortable? What would Wells need to show them to finally make them worry?

TIMING: ~3 minutes. Brief and energizing. Reveal each panel slowly, pause for reaction, then close on the essential question. Do not answer "who runs things in the dark?" — the non-answer is the point. TOTAL CLASS ESTIMATE: 80 minutes as follows — Title (2) + Hook (10) + EQs (4) + Dinner Party (5) + Who's Missing (7) + Science (5) + Technology (5) + Demo (7) + Who Controls (6) + Chapter 2 (5) + Storytelling (5) + Between Lines (5) + Three Futures (5) + Discussion (10) + Journal (10) + Challenge (3) + Preview (3) = 97 minutes at full pace. Build in your cuts: Slide 7 can drop to 3 min, Slide 11 can drop to 3 min, Slide 13 can drop to 3 min if needed. That recovers ~6 minutes and brings you to ~91 min — adjust discussion timers to 90 sec rather than 2 min to find the remaining 11 min as needed. End on this anticipation question. Do NOT reveal the Morlocks. Let students speculate — the best responses often correctly predict the class inversion that's coming, because they intuitively understand that comfort leads to vulnerability. Close by returning to the essential questions from Slide 3: next class they'll see Wells' actual answer to "what happens when inequality continues unchecked?" Remind students to bring their media challenge example. The first student to connect their example back to the Eloi/Morlock split gets that connection noted.