HG Wells and the Morlocks:

In the book, the Morlocks and the Eloi have something of a symbiotic relationship: The Eloi are clothed and fed by the Morlocks, and in return, the Morlocks eat the Eloi. The Time Traveller, who is the main character in ´The Time Machine´, perceives this, and guesses that the Eloi/Morlock relationship developed from a class distinction present in his own time- the Morlocks are the worker class who had to work underground so that the rich upper class would have luxury. The Morlocks live underground, tending machinery, and are seen by many to represent the "soul-deadening" effects of the Industrial Revolution. In the end of the book, the Time Traveller proceeds further in the future, and sees, on a desolate beach, giant crab-like creatures hunting after beautiful creatures that resemble butterflies. The Time Traveller theorizes that this is an eventual result of the Eloi/Morlock struggle.

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Morlocks in other literature
H.G. Wells also wrote a book called ´When the Sleeper Wakes´. The book centers around a man who somehow falls into a sleep for several centuries, and wakes in the mid-21st century to find that he has inherited the world. In this book, we find out that the Salvation Army has rounded up most of the world´s lower class, forcing them to work underground in horrible conditions for the sole benefit of the rich upper class. It would seem that these people will later degenerate to become the Morlocks.

Stephen Baxter, a prominent Science-Fiction writer, wrote a sequel to the Time Machine, called ´The Time Ships´. In this, the Time Traveller attempts to return to the world of the Eloi and Morlocks, but instead finds that he has changed history somehow and finds a completely different world in the future: One in which there never were Eloi. Instead, Humanity constructed a metallic sphere around the sun where humanity now lives. These humans are physically identical to the Morlocks, although they are a race of scientists, not monsters. They do not have war, or religion, or many of the things which is generally had by Humanity. The ´Morlock´ Nebogefel joins the Time Traveller on his travels through time.

Two other books involving Morlocks, by different authors were:

´The Man who loved Morlocks´, by David Lake
´Morlock Night´, by K.W. Jeter.

[link to en.wikipedia.org]

[link to www.bufora.org.uk]

Fairy tales regularly feature a kingdom hidden beneath a hill, only accessed by mortals when and if the fairies wish. This was normally a one-way trip and the luckless mortal was condemned to spend eternity as an unwilling guest of the fairies. Typically, the children’s story of the ‘Pied Piper of Hamlin’ tells how, after failing to pay the piper his rightful fee for ridding the town of a plague of rats, the citizens of Hamlin were punished by having their children led away by the piper into a magical cavern under the ground never to be seen again. Always, we return to a mythical underground world, a place inhabited by supernatural beings, a place of no return, is this perhaps a race memory? In more recent times the writer H. G Wells in his novel ‘The Time Machine’ depicts this recollection of the underworld as a parasitic relationship between the Morlocks, a race of hideous underground sub-humans on a far future earth, and the beautiful, innocent but rather fey Eloi. In reality the Morlocks were technologically proficient cannibals who maintained and fed the humans as a farmer maintains cattle: as food. In the 19th century, popular culture decreed that subterranean civilisations were portrayed as form of idealised society, a variety of Shangri-La where everything was secure, safe and ordered.

An Englishman, Edward Bulwer-Lyton in a little known book ‘The Coming Race’, elaborated upon the concept of a subterranean, superhuman civilisation with noble and honourable ideals emerging as the saviour of the human race. Although better known for his novel ‘The Last days of Pompeii’ it was this work of fiction that eventually inspired the twisted dreams and aspirations of the Nazi Party with the goal of an Aryan master race. Intertwined with the work of Bulwer-Lyton, is the rather more esoteric writing of Madame Helena Blavatski founder of the Theosophy Movement. This, she claimed, was a secret mystical doctrine imparted to her by Tibetan ‘initiates’ and ‘masters’ who lived in caverns hidden in the Himalayas. Yet another strand of this belief in lost civilisations is found in the many references to ‘Agarthi’, a vast, inhabited underground world interconnected by tunnels and lit by a miniature sun. Entry into these realms is effected by means of doorways secreted away all over the world. One book in particular claims that there is such an entrance situated on the Yorkshire moors. The person who discovered this entrance claimed that he could hear the faint sound of machinery echoing along the tunnels but did not feel inclined to proceed further. After leaving the tunnel system, he reported that he could not find the entrance again. Was the entrance on the Yorkshire moors only a passageway leading to a conventional mineshaft? Maybe, but as of now, this has never been proved one way or another.

Another gateway is said to accessible through an underground tunnel

[link to www.bufora.org.uk]

[link to www.edward-bulwer-lytton.org]