The Time Machine

Author: H. G. Wells

This one is completely different from #1 on the list. It's considered a 'classic' in the time-travel genre. Man builds time machine, has a look around at other time periods, but doesn't really do anything significant, confining himself to observation; though he is, of course, being dragged into events. He manages to get out of trouble with his skin intact, does some more traveling, including to pretty much the end of human history and then to the end of the Earth. Maybe the most famous episode of the story is set in a not-too-distant future, where society is divided into two classes: the hyper-refined but ineffectual Eloi, who have ceased to be creative but live off the achievements of their ancestors; and the Morlocks, who live in darkness, and only come out at night. Masters and slaves or farmers and livestock? Why it's on the list: It's a hugely influential novel, imitated many times and providing the germ for tales in several SF sub-genres. Wells was a socialist, and the Eloi-Morlock part of the tale is an obvious metaphor for the class structure of English society at the time (and arguably still persisting now). Somewhat dated in language and style, it's still a must-read classic. The term 'Morlock' has become synonymous with a degraded form of human being; seriously retarded, though possessed of some elemental cunning nonetheless; living in the dark and being exploited by those who live 'above'. On the downside, time-travel in this novel is a mere plot-device to support social dystopian fiction. There's none of the really cool time-paradox and time-loop stuff you get, for example, from someone like Heinlein.