In H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine, the gentle future humans are called the Eloi. They inhabit the Earth in the year AD 802,701, living above ground in a seemingly effortless world of leisure, gardens, and abundant food.
The Eloi are one of two post-human species created by humanity’s long-term social and biological division. Their counterparts, the Morlocks, live underground, operate machinery, and provide much of the Eloi’s food and clothing. The Time Traveller initially sees the Eloi as peaceful descendants of a perfected civilization, but discovers that their apparent gentleness is linked to weakness, passivity, and dependence.
Wells uses the Eloi and Morlocks as a speculative commentary on Victorian class divisions. The Eloi are commonly interpreted as descendants of the privileged upper classes, while the Morlocks represent the exploited industrial working class. Selenites and Martians belong to other H. G. Wells stories, not this novel.