An English scientist goes back in time, meets two races of 'people'. One, a small races of humanoids that lives above ground and have no fear of anything, save for the night time, when the other race of subterranean humanoids surfaces to feed.
When the time traveler finds his machine missing, he must leave the comfort of the surface dwellers to retrieve it.
I read the Gutenberg edition of the text, which has the time traveler travelling forward in time after he retrieves his machine, to see the further decay of humankind and of the Earth. Apparently he goes so far forward that the sun is huge in the sky, yet this would be billions of years in the future, and I presume it would be a little too hot for the time traveler. It was a strange ending. It felt like it was 'tacked on' to lengthen the book a little (it's only a short novella). After I looked up Wikipedia on the subject I wasn't surprised to learn that the part after retrieving the time machine (before the traveler returns home) was inserted at the request of Well's editor, who wanted more length. More 'story'. Since Wells had final say, it was removed from the original text, so I guess that was a nice thing at the time. Still, I was glad to have read that extra part.
7/10.
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