Herbert Wells (1866–1946) is the English writer—“founding father” of science fiction. Wells’s novels contain none of today’s realities—computers, space shuttles, and particle colliders—yet they remain fascinating and never leave the shelves. No matter what Wells targets in his novels—schemes of underground slave Morlocks, the inaction of the rich Eloi, or the illusion of omnipotence and impunity of a presumptuous scientist—more than a hundred years since the first publication of *The Time Machine* and *The Invisible Man*, human vices and weaknesses haven’t changed much. The plot of *The Time Machine* unfolds on Earth in a distant future, where the main character finds himself thanks to a mechanism he built with his own hands. He expects to see a highly developed society, but encounters only degraded people. Disappointed, he goes even further. And finds not a single intelligent being…