You just described the plot of The Time Machine by H G Wells.

I also recommend the movie (the original).

Pretty sure it mostly stems from initial illustrations for The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.

Just updated to include suggested books: Mediations, The Time Machine, and Walden Pond! More book suggestions will be implemented throughout the day.

That movie is fantastic. The entertainment value is beneficial, but the predictive warning is certainly as influential as the book The Time Machine which contained similar analogies.

In case someone doesn't know, Eloi and Morlock are two races descended from man in H.G. Wells' classic 1895 novel 'The Time Machine'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine

PS: Stephen Baxter has a new sequel novel based TTT called 'The Time Ships', I just started reading it, it's great!

I plan on reading this yesterday, thanks for the link.

"The Time Machine" was a great book, Between Wells and Jules Verne I could stay busy for days.

I added The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. (unsure if on Project Gutenberg, but it's at least free on Amazon). btw, when I submitted the form the thank you message was off-white text on a white background.

This idea was explored over a century ago in H. G. Wells' classic "The Time Machine" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine), in which over time humanity split into two distinct species by the process you describe.

In a world with "designer babies", the rich don't just get richer, they get smarter, stronger, more attractive and start to live longer.

The poor can't afford this, so fall further and further behind, perhaps eventually humanity splits into subspecies.

This is very well trod ground. See The time machine by H G Wells with the Morlocs and Eloi, A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley with the Alphas and Betas, etc, etc...

The Phantom Rickshaw and other Eerie Tales, Rudyard Kipling. This is the one that includes "The Man Who Would be King" that's a fairly well known film with Sean Connery and Michael Caine.

His other short story books, such as The Jungle Book and Just So Stories - so much better than the Disney.

The Time Machine and other Stories, H G Wells.

I just finished the Manifold series by Stephen Baxter. The series is a look at the (solution to, reason for, questions surrounding the) Fermi Paradox through three potential lenses. Best and most raw sci-fi I've ever read. The books left me hopeful, suspended, disgusted and in awe of the depth of this man's observation of humanity.

If you're looking for something lighter, perhaps check out Time Ships by the same author. This was the only authorized sequel to the legendary classic The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.

If the survival of a single person is "high stakes" in fiction, then what do you even consider "low stakes"?

> I admit I'm limited to the sample I've experienced personally but it's over 90%.

You need to read a wider selection of books, then. Try, say, The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, Of Mice and Men, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, A Christmas Carol, The Grapes of Wrath, The Time Machine, Dune, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Foundation series, anything by Ray Bradbury... there's a very long list of books that are not driven by simplistic good vs. evil conflicts.

Funny how much I'm reading about this problem right after reading Siracusa's piece: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/02/the-once-and-fut...

I, for one, can say that I was inspired to download "Stanza" after reading that, and have already finished H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" thanks to it!

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead

Sounds like The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

They're from books too. A Trip to Venus and The Time Machine

Someone recommended his The Story of Philosophy and it's been sitting in my kindle wish list for some time.
Anyway, just now listened to the sample (narrated by Grover Gardner). Did not know about the narrator. Gardner seems to be have read more than 500 books. (https://www.audible.com/search?searchNarrator=Grover+Gardner) Maybe will pick up one of The Time Machine, or biographies of Carnegie or Rockefeller if I don't pick Will Durant's book. Thanks.

Of course I realise the planet is moving. The Time Machine is also moving, and in such a way that it retains its exact relative position to the planet. Amazingly it does this without any means of propulsion, relying instead on contact forces (weight, friction) generated by the gravitational attraction between the Machine and the planet.

Seriously, the point is that the Time Machine does not leave our space-time and appear in another. It simply exists through time, like a building or a rock or a pyramid. It is a four dimensional object where the Traveller can move along one of its dimensions.

Anyway, enough arguing about a fictional (and probably impossible) machine. Read the introduction to The Time Machine if you are interested in how H. G. Wells explained it:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35

1. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

2. One L by Scott Turow

3. The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu

4. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

5. Believer: My Forty Years in Politics by David Axelrod

6. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

7. Augustus: First Emperor of Rome by Adrian Goldsworthy

8. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (re-read)

9. I, Claudius by Robert Graves

10. Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks

11. The Fear Index by Robert Harris

12. Red Dragon by Thomas Harris (re-read)

13. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris (re-read)

14. Hannibal by Thomas Harris (re-read)

15. Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin (re-read)

16. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (re-read)

17. Claudius the God by Robert Graves

Re-reads take hardly any time at all, so I'm not sure whether to count them. If you're not, then 11 books read so far.

Thanks. It's Orwell writing in 1941 (1) during the WW II about Wells not understanding what the "irrational" leaders like Hitler were able to archive (and more, not everything is about just H. G. Wells there):

... "he could not grasp the tremendous strength of the old world which was symbolised in his mind by fox-hunting Tories. He was, and still is, quite incapable of understanding that nationalism, religious bigotry and feudal loyalty are far more powerful forces than what he himself would describe as sanity."

And:

"The people who say that Hitler is Antichrist, or alternatively, the Holy Ghost, are nearer an understanding of the truth than the intellectuals who for ten dreadful years have kept it up that he is merely a figure out of comic opera, not worth taking seriously. All that this idea really reflects is the sheltered conditions of English life."

(Emphasis mine).

There are enough those who could be associated with these sentences even today. More decades later the world has changed less than I have believed as I was younger.

1) For the context: H. G. Wells published The Time Machine in 1895, died in 1946. Orwel published 1984 in 1948, and was 38 years old in 1941.

H.G. Wells predicted this in The Time Machine (okay, I'm being slightly tongue in cheek). He wrote of far future human descendants, the Eloi, who had undergone severe mental and physical degradation due to no longer being required to solve difficult physical and societal problems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloi