- How does the Time Traveller know what the Morlocks are called if he doesn't understand their language and the Eloi don't acknowledge their existence?
- He mentions that he picked up a few words of the Eloi language, so presumably he finally got one of them — probably Weena — to make a direct reference to the hairy underground flesh-eaters and picked up that that was the word for them.
- The Eloi don't acknowledge what the Morlocks do to them. It's possible that they do use the word in other contexts, like to tell young Eloi to keep clear of the feeding hall when the Morlocks are dropping off more fruits and vegetables.
- Worth noting that the Time Traveller at several points admits that he's got no real certainty of whether or not his many speculations and hypotheses about the future society are actually accurate, but is just drawing the best conclusions he can based on his observations. Presumably he can't be 100% certain that the name he's associated with the Morlocks and the Eloi is actually the correct name that they actually are identified or identify themselves with, but is simply calling them both that because (a) he's heard those words/noises used around them and is assuming they apply, (b) he needs to call them something for purposes of clarity and conciseness, and (c) it's not like either his audience or the entities in question are in a position to challenge or correct him anyway.
- Or alternatively: we've got a bit of Unreliable Narrator going on, the Time Traveller doesn't actually know what they're really called, and is just giving both groups a name which to him seems appropriate. Since, as mentioned above, it's not like anyone can challenge him on it anyway.
- When he finally gets the machine back, why does the Time Traveller go forward all those millions of years before going home, when he'd made it clear several times he was desperate to get back?
- Curiosity killed the cat?
- That's answered in the book: he was frantically grabbing at the controls while trying to escape the Morlocks, and didn't realise until after he was in flight that he'd pushed the lever the wrong way.
- Why, upon his return, does the traveller so adamantly demand meat? You'd think he'd be turned off of it for a while after what he learned about his futuristic friends...
- Probably he wanted to eat something familiar to help him cope with the stress of the trip.
- To quote Professor Arturo from Sliders, "my stomach has no political preferences." The Time Traveller clearly isn't a vegetarian by routine, and so is used to having meat in his diet. He has also subsisted for a week (from his perspective) on nothing but fruit. He's probably starving for the taste of meat. Also, his exact words at the time would seem to suggest that the food he's survived on so far hasn't given him much in the way of protein, and meat is probably the closest thing available to fill that particular need. Plus, to be fair to him, him chowing down on a bit of mutton isn't exactly the same as the Morlocks resorting to cannibalism, since it's a different speciesnote . Presumably the Time Traveller simply has a strong stomach / constitution.
- It's likely that the Eloi have adapted to an all-vegetarian diet over the millennia, and the food provided to them by the Morlocks is lacking in B vitamins, zinc, magnesium and iron as well as protein. The Time Traveller still needs these for good health, and a body that's truly desperate for nutrients will welcome whatever source is available, even if this violates their usual habits or preferences.
- Indeed, the TT specifically references a need for "peptone in my arteries", which is a period-appropriate term for digesting protein. And he describes the smell of his dinner companions' mutton as wholesome meat, presumably to distinguish it from the only other flesh he's encountered in weeks.
- What do the Morlocks eat, other than Eloi? It seems unlikely that the Eloi are numerous enough to be their sole food source.
- They might also eat some of that fruit that the Eloi are fond of eating. Besides which, we don't know if the Time Traveller has visited the only "pen" that the Morlocks keep Eloi farmed in; they could be all over the place. It's a big world, and really the Time Traveller only sees a small corner of it.
- In the novel, the TT speculates that the Morlocks' ancestors started out eating rats, worms, and other subterranean vermin that lived in the same tunnels they labored in. It's possible that they farm those creatures underground as a mainstay, and only go up to the surface to take Eloi (who'd be awfully slow-breeding for livestock) for banquets and the like.
- Seems logical — to feed only on Eloi meat, Morlocks would need Eloi population to outnumber their own by order of magnitude at least (actually, several orders of magnitude, since Eloi are slow-breeding species). It stand to reason that Morlocks are mostly eating fruits and vegetables (also mushrooms, and whatever they could grow in tunnels), and use Eloi only as the sole available source of meat.
- Alternatively, as suggested under Fridge Brilliance, the Morlocks, are artificially selecting the Eloi to breed at a rate more useful for a livestock species, which may be the reason they look like modern human children even as adults.
- There are a few other species of animal life around - sparrows, an owl - that the TT notices in passing. Such creatures, and whatever small prey the owl was feeding on, might supplement the Morlocks' diet; in fact, they might have survived the general extermination of surface wildlife because the tunnel-dwellers found them tasty and worth preserving.
- The titular Time Machine moves in Time, but not in Space. So, if it is constantly occupying the same space, even though it is moving quickly in time, if it is sitting in the same space, then rules of physics dictate that no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time. Since the time machine exists in all time it travels through, and maintains the same space, then shouldn't it be visible to all who pass by, or at the very least, the space incapable of being occupied by anything else in that time?
- The story claims it goes through time too fast to be seen, comparing the effect to a wheel spinning so rapidly that the spokes become invisible. This doesn't solve the problem of it not being solid, however. If you reach through a spinning wheel, the spokes will hit your hand whether you can see them or not.
- Well one way to explain it, consistent with the temperature changes the traveller experiences, would be to say that, for example the time machine experiences one microsecond every hour - if you happen to be looking at the right place at the right time you might catch a flash of it, but will probably not notice it. However, for the guy in the 'time bubble' each microsecond of contact with the normal world, if the normal world around you is a glacier, will cause temperature decrease.
- The reason your hand would interact with the wheel spokes is because they and you are still moving through time at the same rate, even if the spokes are moving faster through space. If you could move through space at the same speed as the spokes you could put your hand in and out without touching them. The Time Machine is moving faster through time, but not through space, so it cannot be interacted with spacially, except by something that occupies the same space for a great amount of time, such as the ground, explaining the below issue of why the Machine doesn't sink to the centre of the Earth. The faster it travels through time, the longer something would have to be in place to interact with it.
- Better yet, if he doesn't move through space while the earth itself continues circling the sun, he should have landed in the vacuum of space pretty soon.
- Clearly he does move in space then, in a manner consistent with the Earth's gravitational field. It's a lot easier to explain how to avoid this problem with a 'static' time machine which gradually moves through time than e.g. a Delorean which travels instantaneously.
- A novella published in Analog in the 1980s addressed these points (the following is a paraphrase, maybe somebody could find the story to correct the quote): "All time-travel stories have assumed that the traveller becomes intangible. They have also assumed that the traveller is affected by Earth's gravity and thus doesn't go floating off into space. Put these two effects together and you don't have The Time Machine, you have Journey to the Center of the Earth."
- Easy answer. He got lucky only twice
- Saying that rules of physics dictate that no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time is more than incorrect, as you don't know the physics behind time travel and they may introduce a new quantum number which changes depending on whether particles are traveling in time normally (100% speed forward) or not. Rules of physics dictate that no two fermionic particles can have the same set of quantum numbers - with that new one introduced, it's not a problem. And it doesn't even matter to bosons anyway. Also, it may modify interactions, which could cause the time traveller to stay in the same place on Earth without disturbing things that move through him. Also, relativity is all about that you cannot point to any absolute point in space. Any kind of movement must derive form the (modified by the new quantum number) forces, like gravity. It won't just stay in some absolutely defined place (which doesn't exist) when the Earth flies away. Then it all makes sense. You can't say any time travel physics are bad, because they work in experiment (the movie universe) and you can't give the good ones. Intuition is not science.
- In other words, the time traveler doesn't end up in space for the same reason most other things don't. Velocity is relative to something we arbitrarily say is zero, like a point on Earth's surface. There's no such thing as absolute zero velocity. If you stand still, you're still moving 30 kilometers PER SECOND relative to the sun, but you don't go flying off into space because Earth is moving at that same velocity. Same deal with the time machine.
- I don't mean to pile on to anyone, but I'd like to add to the "what about space" question which is often brought up in discussions of Time Travel. Given that not only the Earth, but the sun, the rest of the galaxy, and the local group of galaxies are all constantly moving — relative to other celestial objects — just what should a time machine be "still" relative to? "Earth" is just as good an answer as anything else. To put it another way, it's not just about the fact that velocity is relative, but location is, too. There are no absolute coordinates in space, no "center point" in the universe where the coordinates are 0, 0, 0.
- I think it can be best put thusly: According to Newton, yes everything is in motion, but there still is some absolute framework of space and time that motion can be compared to. But Einstein came along and showed that, no, there is no absolute space at all. It's not that we can't measure it, it doesn't physically exist. There is, however, a four-dimensional block of absolute space-time with events sprinkled within it. We see space as three-dimensional "cross-section" of this block with our motion dictating how the "cross-section" is sliced. If we change our motion, and we change how the block is sliced (an excellent illustration here
◊) So, for our time machine, saying that travelling through time would mean it would leave Earth and end up in space is not necessary justified by the physics. It's possible that it would remain on its original path and stay on Earth. - Never mind not being able to see the time machine — I can't believe that over the course of 800,000 years nobody walked through the space that the time machine occupied, or built a wall across it.
- Maybe it became a "haunted spot" where something invisible instantly annihilates anything that is inserted in that space, like an object moving at relativistic speeds would destroy anything it came in contact with?
- If that's the case, it's a good thing the Morlocks moved the machine before it made its next trip. I hope the traveler realizes this before he tries occupying either same spot again.
- Fridge Brilliance He tried traveling forward in time in the exact same spot he came back in time and is the reason he never came back.
- The machine might effectively "jump" from one time to another without passing through the interval between them. In which case, it doesn't risk intersecting with objects that pass through its spatial location during the intervening period, any more than a person who's beamed down from the U.S.S. Enterprise needs to worry about colliding with the ship's hull. The progressive changes the TT reports - the sprouting and vanishing trees, the twinkle of days and nights passing, etc - aren't really happening; they're something his mind constructs to deal with the confusion of the transition.
- The story claims it goes through time too fast to be seen, comparing the effect to a wheel spinning so rapidly that the spokes become invisible. This doesn't solve the problem of it not being solid, however. If you reach through a spinning wheel, the spokes will hit your hand whether you can see them or not.
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