At a Victorian dinner party in Richmond, London, the Time Traveller tells his extraordinary tale of humankind's 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.

The first book H. G. Wells published, 'The Time Machine' is a scientific romance that helped invent the genre of science fiction. The work is credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively forward or backward through time. In fact, the term 'time machine' was coined by H. G. Wells.