Eloi

H.G. Wells' Time Machine, that's a 1895 novel in which a scientist inventor, he travels many years into the future, and he discovers that humanity has split into two distinct species.

We have the Eloi, they're a fowl, a childlike and a peaceful race of service dwellers, and the Morlocks, they're brutal, ape-like, subterranean creatures.

Metropolis was an extraordinary 1927 German silent film, and it depicted a future urban society.

The privileged and the wealthy, they reign over the city of Metropolis, while underground dwellers, they toil to operate the great machines that power it.

There were others.

The Eloi.

Pleasant enough people.

But they was dying out.

they, um...

Tell stories.

The Eloid.

Yeah,

He hypothesized that these classes would eventually evolve into entirely separate, symbiotic and horrifying species.

The Eloi and the Morlocks.

Yes, the delicate, useless Eloi and the monstrous subterranean Morlocks who feed on them.

The time machine is just a lens to magnify the socioeconomic flaws of 1895.

From the far future, we snap back to the trauma of the 20th century.

Where are they? There are only two species that exist.

The beautiful little fey-like Eloi and the horrible Morlocks who all live underground.

And I don't remember exactly what the Eloi are described to look like in the books.

I just know that they're small, they're slight.

Again, kind of as you'd imagine, feel like they're really weak.

But ultimately, I think of them as pink because I do think that they were pink in Wishbone.

And I don't remember what the Morlocks were depicted like, but they were underground.

The time traveler eventually realizes that actually the Eloi and the Morlocks are both They are what happened to humanity.

Life as we know it today seems to continue in the skyscrapers above.

H.G. Wells' Eloi made real, lording over the Morlocks on the streets below.

Except the street level is where Kenny chose to stage the Fossil Fools play.

Did you catch the skin color of its director? She's Black, suggesting Fossil Fools, a brutal takedown of rich white men, was itself originally staged by artists of color.

Uh-huh.

When he goes into the future world of the Morlocks and the Eloi in the 100,000-

Uh

... year range-

Mm

... one of the Eloi tells him, "It's all clear." Meaning, the Morlocks aren't around.

You're safe now.

Yeah.

Another thing that shows some of that is in, once again, H.G. Wells' Time Machine from 1895.

We meet the Eloi, which are future humans that have not a ton of features, but they are described with some things like large eyes, small ears, small mouths, and this idea, once again, of the future of humanity going and losing some of its humanity as we continue to, quote, unquote, "evolve".

Probably, though, the most inspirational feature is War of the Worlds.

1897, the famous story, you know, famously broadcast on radio and causing panics because it was done as a, if it was being reported of disaster happening.