Technophilia and Technophobia: The Late 19th Century to the 1920s
Paul Alkon (1994) notes
that as sci-fi developed its voice in the late 19th century, an interesting
dichotomy developed. Writers in France, notably Jules Verne, portrayed
technology as good (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and From
the Earth to the Moon) and tended to see technology as the way
to "save" mankind from itself, as the answer to the world's
problems. English writers such as H.G. Wells wrote about technology
in cautionary tales (The 
Time
Machine and War of the Worlds). Technology is rarely portrayed
as neutral. As well, fiction from this time predicted the future in
great flights of fancy. For example, Wells, who was more accurate
than most, predicted aerial warfare with airplanes in 1899, well before
airplanes had actually flown (Alkon, 1994).
Perhaps the most intriguing examples of technology in fiction writing from this early period are the time machine stories, the first of which, The Time Machine, was written by Wells in 1895. Imitators, such as The Time Journey of Dr. Barton by J.L. Hodgson in 1929 or The World Below by S.F. Wright in 1930, appeared soon after. From 1905, with the publication of Einstein's special theory of relativity, time travel into the future has been known to be theoretically possible and under some conditions even into the past (Nahin, 1993). Nahin notes that the paradox of meeting one's self in the past or changing the past are often explored in time travel stories.
The time travel genre is still popular in the present day in film, TV and literature. Recent time travel novels include Michael Crichtion's Timelines, Stephen Baxter's Manifold Time and Ronald Wright's A Scientific Romance (1997), which brings Wells' original time machine into present day London.
