Wow, ngl your response to /u/charliesmahm is weirdly aggressive considering their original comment was pretty damn benign. The way you go on an immediate unprovoked attack against a random user calling them a "coward", "moronic", and accusing them of "repeating nonsense" is suspicious as hell, tbh. Are you the author in question or something?

I don't have many interesting stories like that, but the closest is probably when I was staying at a hostel in Germany years ago. A random stranger staying in the same room at the hostel gifted me a copy of Carlos Castaneda's A Separate Reality (which they had received from someone else in turn, read and enjoyed and wanted to pass it on). I'm not sure it would be as much my thing these days, but for where I was at mentally at the time I really ended up enjoying the book a lot.

I still have it and have wanted to pass it on to someone else in a similar context to keep the chain going, but haven't really found myself in a similar situation since. Maybe one day though! Maybe I'll put it in one of those Little Free Libraries with a note or something.

>The Time Machine isn’t a science fantasy story, it’s a horror story, and it’s entire plot is essentially the author walking into progressively darker and more horrific versions of earth.

My perspective is that's its clearly meant as dystopian fiction rather than horror. H.G. Wells was on the socialist side of the political spectrum for most of his life, and the divide between the Morlocks and Eloi were, at least to me, obviously meant to comment on class war (workers vs capitalist elite/owners of the means of production). But I agree, I don't think I've seen an adaptation that reflects the social commentary side of the story. The message, in either case, is stripped away. Kind of like War of the Worlds was part social commentary on British colonialism.

More and more, people seem unable to deal with disagreement or conflict. Some readers don't get that it's impossible for any human being to write an entirely "neutral" book that doesn't reflect author voice or opinion in some shape or form, even if subtle. Interestingly, those readers often only seem to complain when the author's opinion or voice suggests a belief in something that the reader feels strongly opposed to. Then it becomes "the author pushing their agenda". If you're going to dislike a book for an opinion or issue you disagree with and that an author seems to be framing positively, to me the more logical response is just to say that plainly, instead of acting like an author should hide their opinion/belief.

There are some books where it can feel like an author is beating you over the head with an idea, but to me that has more to do with the writing than the expression of that idea.

I don't live in the US but this is horrendous. At the same time, maybe not surprising. I wouldn't be surprised to see this happening here in Canada these days, tbh. We really need to be vigilant in protecting hard earned rights and public services.