The Time Machine

H.G. Wells's 1895 novella in which a Victorian inventor travels to the year 802,701 to find humanity has diverged into two species — the effete surface-dwelling Eloi and the subterranean predatory Morlocks — as the consequence of 19th-century class stratification.

Establishes the core science fiction move of using temporal displacement to perform social criticism — using Darwin's evolution theory to extrapolate the Victorian class system into a dystopia where the leisure class has become prey to the working class they once exploited.