In writing “The Time Machine” 125 years ago, Herbert George Wells not only invented the catchphrase “time machine,” but he also invented a time machine of imagination, for its pages whisk the time-bound reader beyond the constraints of the numerical continuum of space and experience, leaping into a bizarre future that is both beautiful and brutal in its features. “The Time Machine” is both science fiction and social fiction, and as time has shown, the impossible dreams of science tend to come true, as do the impossible nightmares of society. It is hard to tell if “The Time Machine” is ahead of its time or behind it. It is probably both, for time and one’s position in it, according to the story and its theory, is relative. That time is a flimsy thing, however, is not terribly surprising. That there is such a thing as time at all, this rolling …