...and now it is made quite clear that the Morlocks are the Bad Guys, if there was any doubt. This was again perhaps a socialist cautionary tale: treat the workers well and make the classes more equitable, or you'll get eaten. Nom. (Oh, hello "dismemberment" tag, I've missed you!)
We've got two covers for you today, because I've found more fun covers than there are installments left in the book. Both for today are from pulp magazines that reprinted the story in the 1950s, because sweet Oz do I love me some pulp covers.
This first one is from volume 11, no. 6 of Famous Fantastic Mysteries, with a cover painting by Norman "Mars Attacks" Saunders. Since this is the pulps, we've got our Time Traveler — who specifically describes himself as "not a young man," but whose appearance is otherwise up to the imagination, so why not — as a rugged young man, and the tiny, childlike Weena as a tall, voluptuous blonde, perfectly coiffed and given a nice little nothing to almost wear. Other than that, it's actually a reasonable depiction of the book, more or less. At least, one could identify it as actually BEING from this story, though sexier and more actiony. Oh, and I also like the numbers randomly flying through the sky.
Another cover and notes after the jump!
This one, from volume 1, no. 4 of Two Complete Science-Adventure Books, from Winter 1951 and with art by Allen Anderson, though... I wouldn't pick this out of a lineup. We've got a lady — presumably Weena, she's the only lady in the dang book — with some sort of... metal skullcap? And being hit by some sort of ray, I think? I assume the multiple views of her are supposed to represent the time travel, like frames on a film reel. It's cool-lookin', don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure how Mr. Anderson got this out of The Time Machine.
Incidentally, this was the first publishing of The Tritonian Ring by L. Sprague de Camp. I haven't read it, but it apparently does involve Amazons, so the cover could potentially be accurate. It apparently also involves "an amorous centauress," so color me intrigued.
So, notes! At 15:33, TT compares the Eloi to "the Carlovingian kings, [who] had decayed to a mere beautiful futility." He's referring to the Carolingian dynasty which ruled France (well, what would become France, ish) from the 8th century AD To the 10th (again, ish). The greatest of this dynasty was undoubtedly the legendary Charlemagne, but his descendents became more ornamental than functional and declined in power, ultimately dying out in the 12th century.
18:55 brings an odd moment where we briefly rejoin the framing narrative for a paragraph. I feel I should point out here, since you can't see the punctuation, that the entire book besides the framing narrative is written in quotation marks. Yes, that's right, EVERY SINGLE PARAGRAPH that is part of the Time Traveler's story starts with an opening quotation mark (single or double, depending on whether they go with British or American notation, respectively). It's actually from this book that I learned, way back when, that you don't put a closing quotation mark at the en of a paragraph if the same speaker continues directly into the next paragraph. It's a bit of an odd choice, but I didn't essentially invent a whole sub-genre of science fiction, so what do I know.
Ooh, and then we get into astronomy, which I love. He mentions at 22:42 that there's a star brighter than "our own green Sirius," which is of course the brightest star in our sky, and will continue to be so for the next 210,000 years or so and will no longer be so well before Wells's year of 802,701. Shortly afterwards, he talks about the "great processional cycle." He's talking about the precession of the equinoxes, where the Earth sort of wobbles on its axis over time, like a top wobbles in circle as it spins, before falling down. This means that our axis -- which currently points at Polaris, the North Star -- points at different places over the millennia. It completes one complete circle in about 26,000 years, meaning that in the 800,000 years the Time Traveler time traveled, it would have completed about 30 circuits, not the 40 Wells states. He might've had less accurate data then, though.
Last, at 26:40, TT attempts to produce "Carlyle-like scorn" for the Eloi. Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish philosopher and writer whose works were very influential in the creation of socialism, and ho held a deep contempt for the aristocracy. TT presumes Carlyle would have thought the Eloi deserved their current lot in life, as the last remnants of a useless ruling class. EAT THE RICH.
If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!
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