ABSTRACT
Engaging with the Anthropocene always also entails considering how the idea is communicated to the broader public as a story about the nature of human activity at scale. Perhaps no fictional device expresses this dynamic more clearly than the time machine, a deus ex machina predicated upon extending human experience and perception far beyond a geologic period. As theorists struggle to articulate the boundaries and characteristics of the Anthropocene, it becomes equally urgent to realize how cultural and scientific stories like H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) occupy the conceptual space that it seeks to fill.
