From Wells To Anderson

In HG Wells' The Time Machine, a nineteenth century scientist constructs the Time Machine, sets off into the future and learns that mankind will devolve.

In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol, a twentieth century engineer is recruited by a time travelling organization founded in the future by our evolutionary successors. The Patrol addresses those "...curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion..." that Wells' outer narrator had only hinted at. 

Although Wells and Anderson are not the only sf writers to address the concept of time travel, the treatment of this idea by these two authors is extremely comprehensive. This is my last thought of the day after the completion of a rereading of Anderson's Wellsian narrative, "Flight to Forever."

What comes next? (We don't know yet.)

Good night.