Copied from the Logic of Time Travel blog:
See A Few Details In The Time Machine.
One detail that I missed before was the detailed description of the model Time Machine:
"The
thing the Time Traveller held in his hand was a glittering metallic
framework, scarcely larger than a clock, and very delicately made. There
was ivory in it, and some transparent crystalline substance."
-HG Wells, The Time Machine (London, 1973), Chapter 2, p. 13.
On
closer inspection, that description is not very detailed but it gives
that impression. It is appropriate that this hand-held Time Machine is
compared to a clock, that it contains an exotic substance, ivory, and
that the transparent crystalline substance remains unidentified. We know
something of what the Time Machine looks like but not, of course, how
it works.
But every description in The Time Machine is appropriate:
the substantial-seeming full-size Time Machine is unstable, swaying like a branch in the wind;
the model looks "'...singularly askew...'" (p. 14) and one part of it seems unreal;
the ruddy sunset sets the Time Traveler's mind on the sunset of mankind (Chapter 6, p. 37).
Another
detail is the eclipse in Chapter 14, "The Further Vision." The day
darkens as a concavity grows across the curve of the large red sun which
is now motionless on the horizon:
"'Either the moon or
the planet Mercury was passing across the sun's disk. Naturally, at
first I took it to be the moon, but there is much to incline me to
believe that what I really saw was an inner planet passing very near to
the earth.'" (p. 94)
But Mercury would have to pass
very close to cover the entire swollen solar disk as it proceeds to do.
And what inclines the Time Traveler to believe that this was not the
moon? Earth now has one face to the sun so maybe that is enough to
indicate that the moon is not there any more? Here, the experience of
Poul Anderson's Martin Saunders closely parallels that of Wells' Time
Traveler:
"Saunders looked out on a bare mountain
scene, grim as the Moon - but the Moon had long ago fallen back toward
its parent world and exploded into a meteoric rain. Earth faced its
primary now; its day was as long as its year. Saunders saw part of the
sun's huge blood-red disc shining wanly."
-Poul Anderson, "Flight to Forever" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 207-288 AT p. 284.
Wells
wrote about the Time Traveler and his Time Machine. Wells' successors,
including Anderson, write about time travelers and their time
machines. Heinlein wrote the Future History. Heinlein's successors,
including Anderson, write future histories. (Of course, Wells and
Stapledon also wrote future histories but on a different model.)
One more detail:
the Time Traveller fancies that he sees a black object flopping about on the beach of the salt Dead Sea;
rereading, we remember that there was such a flopping object;
then he judges that the object is motionless and is a mere rock;
we think that we were mistaken to remember a moving object;
then, after a while, he sees that it is indeed moving, like a tentacled football;
it is the last thing that he sees before he returns home.
Did
Wells deliberately write that passage in such a way that anyone reading
the text for a second time would think that he had been mistaken but
would then rediscover the fitfully hopping object, "...black against the
weltering blood-red water..."? (p. 95) Probably not.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Your commentary on Anderson's "Flight To Forever" makes me think BETTER of that story. I had hitherto thought this early work of his interesting but not one of his best stories. But I realize now there is MUCH to be found in that piece. Also, "Flight To Forever" now comes across to me as being very "Wellsian," as have been influenced by H.G. Wells works.
Sean
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