Niffenegger's time traveller and his wife have a daughter who is also a time traveller so an obvious title for a sequel would have been The Time Traveller's Daughter but apparently the sequel, not yet published, is to be called The Other Husband because the time travelling daughter has husbands in two periods. The real literary successors or "children" of the original Time Traveller are several characters created by Poul Anderson and by some other sf writers. I started to compile a list but every reader can do this for him- or herself. However, Anderson's list is longer than anyone else's and particularly impressive.
Monday 26 September 2022
The Time Traveller's Children
The title of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife suggested that this novel might be a direct sequel to Wells' The Time Machine but fortunately it is much better than that. I have read half a dozen Time Machine sequels and thought that none was successful except Christopher Priest's The Space Machine which is mainly a sequel to The War Of The Worlds. Poul Anderson could have sequelized The Time Machine well but did not need to. In his There Will Be Time, one of the mutant time travellers gives the time travel idea to a young English writer.
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5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
In a way Anderson did write a "sequel" to Wells WAR OF THE WORLDS, I mean the former's THE WAR OF TWO WORLDS. Frankly, I thought Anderson's story better than Wells.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think we can distinguish between direct or literal sequels and conceptual sequels. Thus, Anderson's "The Troublemakers" is a conceptual sequel to Heinlein's "Universe" etc.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree with the distinction between literal and conceptual sequels.
Been a long time I've POSSIBLY read Heinlein's "Universe." I'll have to rummage thru my Heinlein books to see if I have it.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
"Universe" is Part I of ORPHANS OF THE SKY which is Vol V of the Future History.
Paul.
Paul: agreed.
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