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The Time Machine

H. G. Wells · 1895 · 32,463 words
1:29:55
at 400 wpm · the whole book
The audiobook runs about three and a half hours.

After dinner in Richmond, the Time Traveller, whom Wells never names, sets a small ivory-and-crystal machine on the table and it disappears. A week later he limps in halfway through his own dinner party, filthy and grey, and tells the rest of the book: the year 802,701, where leisure and labour have bred humanity into two species, the small idle Eloi in the gardens above and the pale Morlocks working the machinery below. His machine goes missing. A small Eloi called Weena attaches herself to him. Then further out still, to giant crabs on a beach under a swollen red sun. Be ready for a monologue: four-fifths of this is one man talking after dinner, and its longest chapter breaks off to explain the theory.

17 chapters · begin at the beginning
IIntroduction4:51begin ▸
·IIThe Machine3:49sealed
·IIIThe Time Traveller Returns5:42sealed
·IVTime Travelling5:49sealed
·VIn the Golden Age4:33sealed
·VIThe Sunset of Mankind6:05sealed
·VIIA Sudden Shock6:25sealed
·VIIIExplanation11:36sealed
·IXThe Morlocks5:55sealed
·XWhen Night Came6:55sealed
·XIThe Palace of Green Porcelain6:44sealed
·XIIIn the Darkness7:13sealed
·XIIIThe Trap of the White Sphinx2:58sealed
·XIVThe Further Vision5:13sealed
·XVThe Time Traveller’s Return1:22sealed
·XVIAfter the Story3:59sealed
·Epilogue0:46sealed

How long does it take to read The Time Machine?

The Time Machine is 32,463 words. At an average adult reading pace of 300 words a minute that is about 1 hr 48 min, or roughly 1 hr 21 min if you read quickly and 2 hr 42 min at a more deliberate 200 words a minute.

That count is measured from the complete public-domain text rather than estimated from a page count, so you can compare all the books side by side.

Text: The Time Machine, H. G. Wells (1895), public domain, via Project Gutenberg. · You read at the book's authored pace; nothing here is stored anywhere but this browser. · About Midsentence