Time Travel Fiction II

Time Travel Fiction contrasts major culminations of time travel fiction with one fan's few fanfics. I could also have mentioned that earlier stage of the creative process, the idea, e.g., the idea of a time machine (Wells) or of a sequel to The Time Machine (some of Wells' successors). Alan Moore said that artistic creation is magic because first there is nothing, then there is an idea, then there is a physical artifact like a book. Of course, there are also the materials of creation, "...His dark materials...," like life, language and earlier literature.

It is very easy to have an idea without a finished product, e.g., see my idea for a sequel to The Time Machine here. I have read half a dozen sequels to The Time Machine but do not recommend any of them. (Christopher Priest's The Space Machine sequelizes The War Of The Worlds more than The Time Machine.) Since Poul Anderson made excellent contributions to several other authors' series, he could probably have written a good Time Machine sequel.

However, there are two kinds of "sequels." When I told an academic philosopher that I was reading a sequel to The Time Machine, he asked, "Is it a sequel in a strong sense?" Anderson's "Brave To Be A King" is a direct sequel to his "Time Patrol" whereas the same author's "Flight to Forever," Time Patrol series, The Corridors Of Time and Their Will Be Time are literary successors of Wells' The Time Machine. Such successors might be classed as "conceptual sequels" although I would not argue terminology. In both cases, the later work comes after, is influenced by and even owes its existence to the earlier work.

I find some parallels, not influences, between Anderson's The Dancer From Atlantis and Doctor Who. See here. The latter is another Time Machine successor or conceptual sequel.