trees shoot up like green rockets;
the Sun becomes a circle of fire across the sky;
seasons flicker until Earth moves into a period when there are no winters;
the slowest snail is too fast for him to see.
The Time Traveler describes himself as rushing headlong whereas the reality is the reverse. His physiology and psychology have slowed way down so that he effectively fast forwards everything else.
The time travelers in Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time (New York, 1973) travel in the same way but without needing a machine. Jack Havig explains:
"'I'm in a shadow world while I time-travel. Lighting varies from zero to grey. If I'm crossing more than one day-and-night period, it flickers. Objects look dim, foggy, flat. Then I decide to stop, and I stop, and I'm back in normal time and solidness...No air reaches me on my way. I have to hold my breath, and emerge occasionally for a lungful if the trip takes that long in my personal time.'" (p. 37)
The Time Traveler has no problem with breathing. His Machine must carry some air along with it. But how does Havig see? He speculates that he is moved by a four-dimensional force with both an electromagnetic component and a field that catches a few photons and carries them along with it. He moves faster if he strains but this is exhausting so he thinks that body energy is used to generate and apply the thrusting force. But even a trip through several centuries has never taken more than a few minutes by his watch.
I began this post because I wanted to comment on a much longer journey near the end of the novel, on p. 158, but I have run out of time so that will be a future post.
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