From the Bookshelf: The Time Ships
Feb. 1st, 2008 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerHaving recently found a copy of "The Island of Dr. Moreau" in the recent Penguin Books series of annotated versions of H.G. Wells's novels, I decided to do some re-reading; Wells's works of early science fiction are among my favourite books. Along the way, though, I decided to take in a slight detour of sorts. As if to help demonstrate that with enough time, mere "fanfiction" transforms into a "respectful homage" (although I'm sure some would point to the concept of the public domain as well), the English science fiction writer Stephen Baxter (who I've also read a number of works by) wrote a sequel to "The Time Machine" a full century after that book was published. I actually bought my copy of "The Time Ships" from my university's used book store, no doubt forcing one person who actually needed the book for whatever course it was for to buy a copy at full price...
"As everybody knows now," "the Time Traveller" never returned again to his own time at the end of "The Time Machine." In "The Time Ships," he continues to tell his story in a somewhat different fashion than in the original, first planning to return to the year 802701 AD to set right a failing of his in the first story. However, on his way back to the future he discovers he's already managed to change history... (The potential first juxtaposition between the Time Traveller's being convinced history at large is "a fixed and unalterable thing" and trying to make one small wrong right, though, is one "The Time Ships" doesn't quite seem to me to dwell on, though.) At greater length than the original, yet capturing a sort of quaint late-Victorian flavour to the Time Traveller's words, the story steps beyond the original's dark meditation on the possibility of two forms of human devolution to explore the vistas of science fiction and strange complexities of time travel that Wells helped open up. The book does have a sort of episodic nature to it, and the part of it I've found most interesting may be a sort of "alternative history" where World War I has dragged on until 1938 and London is covered by an immense concrete dome; however, in time the story escapes from it as well on to its next scenario.
A lot of Stephen Baxter's work, for me, shows an interesting tension between heroic engineer-astronauts striving against incompetent politicians and bureaucrats and the grander vision of science fiction's dreams of human mastery facing the void of space, depths of time, and a universe not always the way we might want it. "The Time Ships" avoids the possible simplicities of that first facet and, perhaps responding to the cosmic pessimism of "The Time Machine" itself, takes a positive view in the end. Along the way, references to other novels and stories by Wells are worked in (including some references to earlier versions of "The Time Machine" itself), but not obtrusively so in my opinion. It also manages to bring the Time Traveller up to date on late twentieth-century science, and even proposes a theory for the working of the Time Machine itself just a little more complex than "push a lever, and off you go," if involving that old science fiction standy of an exotic element. There's one thing about this that catches my attention, though. One small, almost throwaway reference in "The Time Machine" (brought to my attention by a footnote in the Penguin edition, which also shows how an earlier version of the book made it more explicit) states that the Time Traveller encountered no convenient guide to the future; in "The Time Ships," he does, relieving him of much of the trouble of puzzling out things by himself. It's one thing to work with the science of today instead of just making it all up, but to me it's a little peculiar to have someone from the year 657208 AD always referring to twentieth-century scientists.
"As everybody knows now," "the Time Traveller" never returned again to his own time at the end of "The Time Machine." In "The Time Ships," he continues to tell his story in a somewhat different fashion than in the original, first planning to return to the year 802701 AD to set right a failing of his in the first story. However, on his way back to the future he discovers he's already managed to change history... (The potential first juxtaposition between the Time Traveller's being convinced history at large is "a fixed and unalterable thing" and trying to make one small wrong right, though, is one "The Time Ships" doesn't quite seem to me to dwell on, though.) At greater length than the original, yet capturing a sort of quaint late-Victorian flavour to the Time Traveller's words, the story steps beyond the original's dark meditation on the possibility of two forms of human devolution to explore the vistas of science fiction and strange complexities of time travel that Wells helped open up. The book does have a sort of episodic nature to it, and the part of it I've found most interesting may be a sort of "alternative history" where World War I has dragged on until 1938 and London is covered by an immense concrete dome; however, in time the story escapes from it as well on to its next scenario.
A lot of Stephen Baxter's work, for me, shows an interesting tension between heroic engineer-astronauts striving against incompetent politicians and bureaucrats and the grander vision of science fiction's dreams of human mastery facing the void of space, depths of time, and a universe not always the way we might want it. "The Time Ships" avoids the possible simplicities of that first facet and, perhaps responding to the cosmic pessimism of "The Time Machine" itself, takes a positive view in the end. Along the way, references to other novels and stories by Wells are worked in (including some references to earlier versions of "The Time Machine" itself), but not obtrusively so in my opinion. It also manages to bring the Time Traveller up to date on late twentieth-century science, and even proposes a theory for the working of the Time Machine itself just a little more complex than "push a lever, and off you go," if involving that old science fiction standy of an exotic element. There's one thing about this that catches my attention, though. One small, almost throwaway reference in "The Time Machine" (brought to my attention by a footnote in the Penguin edition, which also shows how an earlier version of the book made it more explicit) states that the Time Traveller encountered no convenient guide to the future; in "The Time Ships," he does, relieving him of much of the trouble of puzzling out things by himself. It's one thing to work with the science of today instead of just making it all up, but to me it's a little peculiar to have someone from the year 657208 AD always referring to twentieth-century scientists.