When H.G. Wells sent the hero of The Time Machine into what Wells called "futurity," it was on a grim 30-million-year round-trip to pretty much the end of Earth time, when the last, poorest excuses for life were flopping around like squid under a darkening sun. Wells wasn't the first writer to imagine time travel, but he advanced the idea that a machine, rather than an angel or a bonk on the head, could accomplish it, and he pushed his machine to the limit.