Theodore Dalrymple on HG Wells's 'The Time Machine'

Join us for a lecture by Theodore Dalrymple (the nom de plume of Anthony Daniels) on Wells's extraordinary "scientific romance," The Time Machine. Although Wells was an ardent believer in social progress, the future that he envisions in what is arguably his most famous novel is hardly a progressive fantasy. Instead, he conjures a dark, dystopian world, one which is in tension with his own political, evolutionary, and collectivist commitments. An artist whose creativity and insight were untrammeled by his personal politics, Wells offers an instructive example of a literary genius divided between his views and his muse, his own personal perspective and his enduring, inspired vision. This tension—between what someone feels he ought to think and what he actually does think—is one many of us face today.