Summary

A lost manuscript. A legendary author. A future he was never meant to witness.

When Keith White, Director of Rare Books at the New York Public Library, discovers an impossible 1890 edition of The Time Machine, he realizes it contains something extraordinary: a firsthand account written by H.G. Wells himself, chronicling a secret trip into the future five years before the “official” novel was ever published.

Inside the hidden text, Wells describes activating his experimental machine and arriving in 2025, only to find a world collapsing under its own weight. Chicago and London are nearly unrecognizable, filled with homelessness, crime, addiction, organ theft, technology beyond imagination, and societal decay. What begins as a bold scientific experiment becomes a harrowing struggle to survive.

Along the way, Wells encounters desperate families living under bridges, violent thieves, an unexpected friend who alters history, and a society so advanced yet morally unmoored that it shakes him to his core.

Stranded more than a century from home and injured in ways he never anticipated, Wells must uncover the final truth: Can he return to his own time and if so, at what cost to history?

Back in the present, Keith becomes obsessed with proving the manuscript’s authenticity, especially after discovering a cryptic inscription addressed directly to H.G. Wells.

Blending time-travel adventure, historical fiction, social commentary, and literary mystery, The Man Who Stole Tomorrow reimagines the legacy of a science-fiction pioneer through the story he never told.

A gripping, emotionally resonant journey across time and what it truly means to change it.