Morlock

Morlocks are one of the two fictional species of post-humans created by H. G. Wells for his 1895 novel The Time Machine. The origin of the names is not established. In the Wells' story, the Morlocks are the novel's main antagonists. Since their creation by Wells, Morlock characters have appeared in many other works, including sequels, films, television shows, as well as in works by other authors.

Name origin

With regard to the choice of the name, one writer has made a specific association between Wells' "Morlocks" and the Morlachs, a rural people of Venetian Dalmatia, frequently demonized by Westerners in the 16th–18th centuries. Alternatively, one scholar suggests it likely that the name was a combination of the word "warlock" and the god Moloch, the Canaanite god of child sacrifice, which positions Eloi as analogous to children.

In ''The Time Machine''

The Morlocks are at first a mysterious presence in the book, in so far as the protagonist initially believes the Eloi are the sole descendants of humanity. Later, the Morlocks are made the story's antagonists. They dwell underground beneath the English countryside of AD 802,701, maintaining ancient machines that they may or may not remember how to build. Their only access to the surface world is through a series of well-like structures that dot the countryside of future England.
After thousands of generations of living without sunlight, the Morlocks have come to resemble troglofauna. They are described as apelike, with dull grey-to-white skin, chinless faces, large greyish-red eyes with a capacity for reflecting light, and flaxen hair on the head and back. They are stronger than the Eloi, but smaller and weaker than the average human, but a large swarm of them could be a serious threat to a lone man, especially unarmed and/or without a light source. Unlike the Eloi, the Morlocks retain some of their human curiosity, initiative, and aggression: they are intrigued by the Time Traveller and band together to attack him when he invades their dwelling. Their language is composed of strange, unpleasant sounds, which the Time Traveller never deciphers. Their sensitivity to light usually prevents them from attacking during the day.
The relationship between the Morlocks and the Eloi is symbiotic: the Eloi are clothed, fed and possibly bred by the Morlocks, and the Morlocks consume the Eloi as a food source. Seeing this, the Time Traveller speculates that the relationship developed from a class distinction present in his own time: the Morlocks are descendants of the working class who were relegated to working and living underground so that the rich upper class could live in luxury on the surface. With time, the roles altered – the surface people grew apathetic and helpless to the point that they were no longer masters of their subterranean counterparts. However, the Morlocks must have continued to tend to the Eloi and at some point began using them as livestock.

In sequels and prequels

''When the Sleeper Wakes''

H. G. Wells also wrote a book called When the Sleeper Wakes. The book centers on a man who somehow falls asleep for several centuries, and wakes in the mid-21st century to find that his investments have done so well that he owns the world. An organization called the Labour Company has rounded up most of the world's lower class, forcing them to work underground in terrible conditions for the sole benefit of the rich upper class. It would seem that these people will later degenerate to become the Morlocks. When the "Sleeper" encounters these proto-Morlocks, he notes that they seem to be turning paler, as well as developing their own dialect of English.

''The Time Ships''

The Time Ships, a novel by Stephen Baxter, is a canonical sequel to Wells' The Time Machine, one officially authorized by the Wells estate to mark the centenary of the original's publication. In its wide-ranging narrative, the Time Traveller attempts to return to the world of tomorrow but instead finds that his actions have changed the future: one in which the Eloi have never manifested. Instead, the Earth is a nearly barren waste that has been abandoned in favour of a 220 million kilometres wide self-sustaining sphere around the Sun drawing its energy directly from sunlight, where the Morlocks now live.
The Morlocks in this 1995 novel are utterly peaceful, moralistic, and highly intelligent. The character Nebogipfel learns English in a matter of days and is soon able to speak it fluently, although with some limitations due to the Morlocks' vocal apparatus, which is quite different from humans. The only resemblance these new Morlocks have to the monstrous cannibals of the first future is that of appearance and dwelling "underground". The sphere they inhabit is divided into two concentric shells, with the Morlocks living exclusively inside the nearly featureless exterior. Above them, the inner shell where the sun shines openly is an Earth-like utopia; in its many forms and at many technological levels, they continue on here in much the same way as that of the Time Traveller's era, war being the most obvious holdover.
The Morlocks' new civilization includes a variety of nation-groups based on thought and ideology, in which individuals move between without conflict. All needs are met by the sphere itself, including reproduction where the newly born are "extruded" directly from the floor. These peaceful intelligent Morlocks seem also to have extraordinary resistance to disease and perhaps to radiations too, even when not in their homeworld, as stated by Nebogipfel when in the Paleocene.
Nebogipfel is the only Morlock whose name is revealed, and remains with the Time Traveller throughout the book. Nebogipfel's name derives from the main character of H. G. Wells' first attempt at a time travel story, then called "Chronic Argonauts", and a character there named "Dr. Moses Nebogipfel".

''Morlock Night''

In K. W. Jeter's novel Morlock Night, the Morlocks have stolen the Time Machine and used it to invade Victorian London. These Morlocks are always described as wearing blueish spectacles, which are presumably to protect the Morlocks' sensitive, dark-adapted eyes. The Morlocks are separated into two types, or castes, in the novel. One is the short, weak, stupid Grunt Morlocks, who are supposedly the kind that the Time Traveller encountered, and the other is the Officer Morlocks, who are taller, more intelligent, speak English, and have a high rank within the Morlock invasion force. An example of the latter type is Colonel Nalga, an antagonist later in the book.
Hence, on the whole, these Morlocks are much more formidable than those in Wells' The Time Machine—a clever, technological race with enough power to take over the entire world. They also receive support from treacherous 19th century humans, especially a dark wizard named Merdenne. It is also revealed that the Morlocks living in their native time have stopped allowing the Eloi to roam free and now keep them in pens.

In other printed works

In other fiction

Some authors have adopted the Morlocks and adapted them to their works, often completely unassociated with The Time Machine, or were named in-universe in homage to H.G. Wells' works. The Morlocks appeared in a story by Alan Moore titled Allan and the Sundered Veil, which appeared as part of the comic book collection The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume I. In the story, the Time Traveller takes some of the regular League characters into his future world, where he has made a base out of the Morlock sphinx. The party is soon attacked by Morlocks, who are fierce, simian creatures in this story. They are physically much more powerful than Wells' creatures, although they're similar to the Hunter Morlocks from the 2002 film.
Larry Niven included a version of the Morlocks in his Known Space books. They appear as a subhuman alien race living in the caves in one region of Wunderland, which is one of humanity's colonies in the Alpha Centauri system. Many of these stories are by Hal Colebatch in the shared spin-off series, "The Man Kzin Wars", especially in vols. X, XI and XII. They are also mentioned in stories in the same series by M. J. Harringtom. In Joanna Russ' short story "The Second Inquisition", The Time Machine is referenced a number of times, and the unnamed character referred to as "our guest" claims to be a Morlock, although she does not physically resemble Wells' Morlocks.
In the fictional universe of Warhammer 40,000, Morlocks are the elite warriors of the Iron Hands chapter of space marines and feature in several Horus Heresy novels where they act as bodyguards for their primarch Ferrus Manus. The inhabitants of the Moscow metro are sometimes sarcastically referred to as Morlocks in Dmitry Glukhovsky's Metro 2033.

In non-fiction

In Neal Stephenson's essay on modern culture vis-à-vis operating system development, In the Beginning... was the Command Line, he demonstrates similarities between the future in The Time Machine and contemporary American culture. He claims that most Americans have been exposed to a "corporate monoculture" which renders them "unwilling to make judgments and incapable of taking stands." Anyone who remains outside of this "culture" is left with powerful tools to deal with the world, and it is they, rather than the neutered Eloi, that run things.
J. R. R. Tolkien mentioned Morlocks three times in his 1939 essay On Fairy-Stories, which discusses the genre now called fantasy. The first reference occurs where Tolkien attempts to define the genre, and he suggests that the Morlocks place The Time Machine more in the genre than do the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels. He reasoned that the Lilliputians are merely diminutive humans, whereas the Morlocks and Eloi are significantly different from us, and "live far away in an abyss of time so deep as to work an enchantment". Another reference to the creatures of The Time Machine occurs in the essay's section "Recovery, Escape, Consolation". Here it's argued that fantasy offers a legitimate means of escape from the mundane world and the "Morlockian horror of factories". Elsewhere in his essay, Tolkien warns against separating fantasy readers into superficial categories, using the Eloi and Morlocks as a dramatic illustration of the repercussions of sundering the human race.