The end of life on Earth in "The Further Vision" of Wells' The Time Machine is not matched by anything in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series. However, it is certainly matched by a time traveler's farewell to Sol, then by his survival of the entire universe, in Anderson's "Flight to Forever."
In this early story by Anderson, the "time projector," like Wells' Time Machine, remains stationary on the Earth's surface while traveling through time and eventually returns its occupant to his "present," in this case, 1973.
In Anderson's There Will Be Time, the mutant time travelers, like Wells' character, become invisible and intangible while watching external events flickering past. In Anderson's The Corridors Of Time, as in The Time Machine, time is discussed as a fourth dimension and this idea is put to practical use when corridors constructed in space are rotated onto the temporal axis so that it becomes possible to walk or drive a vehicle between centuries.
Thus, in at least four works, Anderson matches different aspects of this Wellsian classic.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
There's also "The Little Monster," where we see another stationary time machine.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But that machine remains in the present and merely sends travelers into the past like the one in BRING THE JUBILEE by Ward Moore.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Which raises the issue: is it more or less plausible, if we get a REAL time machine, for such a device to remain in the time when it was built, or "go" with time travelers?
Ad astra! Sean
There's no reason a time machine shouldn't continue to be affected by gravity -- which is a curvature in space-time -- as it moves through time, is there?
I don't think so.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Meaning we should see the time machine "going" with these time travelers? Gravity would continue to affect a time machine.
Ad astra! Sean
Gravitational energy is the only thing that escapes a black hole, which is otherwise a sink into which everything vanishes and from which nothing emerges. I think that this indicates it is fundamental in a way that other forces are not; hence I wouldn't be surprised if a time-machine was impalpable in every other respect as it didn't experience duration, but was still fastened to the surface of the planet by gravity.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Black holes are fascinating phenomena! I recall how Poul Anderson speculated in one of his letters to me if it might be possible to travel from our universe to another universe via a black hole.
Ad astra! Sean
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