HG Wells' The Time Machine and Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time are two "classics" of time travel fiction whereas the former and not the latter is a "Classic" of English literature. Scholars of time travel fiction will agree with me about the Anderson novel whereas scholars of English literature will not have heard of it.
Although written by an author of genre sf, There Will Be Time does not obviously belong to that literary ghetto. It is free of any of the accumulated cliches like faster than light drives, routine interstellar travel etc.
Can we talk about conceptual sequels as well as about linear sequels? There Will Be Time is very much a conceptual sequel to The Time Machine. It obliquely acknowledges Wells and ingeniously develops the "curious possibilities" of time travelling that that author had merely hinted at.
The Time Machine has a first person outer narrator, who seems to be Wells himself, and a first person inner narrator, the Time Traveller. Anderson's novel has two first person outer narrators, Poul Anderson and Robert Anderson, and an inner third person viewpoint character, Jack Havig. Thus, Anderson outdoes Wells as regards narrative complexity. In both cases, it is possible that the core narrative is a fiction within the fiction although Wells' outer narrator does see the Time Machine departing right at the end.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I dislike FTL being dismissed as a mere cliche, not when some serious scientists think it just might be theoretically possible.
There's also Wells' THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, another classic of early science fiction. Anderson wrote a response to it called THE WAR OF TW0 WORLDS, which I also believe was better written and plotted. I wish more people would read it!
Ad astra! Sean
We don't know if FTL is possible or not, not yet. And if FTL is possible, time travel is too, probably.
FTL-> time travel, probably.
According to some people investigating the 'wormhole' idea, that might make FTL possible without making time travel also possible.
The idea is that a wormhole is created, one end is kept at 'home' the other end is sent off to some other star & once the wormhole end is there, going through the wormhole gets you to the star in negligible time. Great we have FTL.
However, what if you move one end of the wormhole at a significant fraction of light speed somewhere & back? You should be able to go through the worm to go forward in time one way & backward in the other. However again, the idea is that when the wormholes *approach* allowing time travel EM radiation going through the wormholes and through ordinary space between them would build up in a way that either destroys the wormhole link or pushes the wormhole ends apart. There would be a similar effect if multiple wormhole pairs are arranged in a way to make for backwards time travel my multiple steps.
All *very* speculative, but it's the only FTL proposal I've heard of that is consistent with no time travel.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Jim!
Mr. Stirling: I agree we don't know if FTL is possible. And I would prefer that over time travel.
Jim: The example I had in mind re the theoretical possibility of FTL was the work of Alcubierre. Maybe his work was what you summarized?
I agree, FTL is very theoretical/speculative. To say nothing of the engineering hurdles that would need to be overcome to make it work.
Ad astra! Sean
The Alcubierre drive is quite different from the worm hole network. For one thing if I understand correctly the Alcubierre drive could go back in time.
Note that a bunch of wormhole connections would take time to set up since the wormhole end would be moved slower than light.
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