The Time Machine, Chapters Ten to Twelve and Epilogue

In which our hero swaggers right into an obvious trap, is nearly foiled due to strike-on-box matches, escapes due to time travel, sees the even farther distant future, and returns home; and in which we learn in a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey way that our framing story narrator's name is "Hillyer.



And that wraps it up for The Time Machine! As mentioned in the recording, there was a deleted scene called "The Grey Man" (deleted by Wells himself) that I have recorded and will be posting separately.

I've got a few covers for you this time, mostly seeming to go with the design philosophy of "eh, good enough."

This first one here on the right is by Everyman's Library from 1978. Now, this is not really "eh, good enough," as obviously someone put a lot of work and thought into this 'cause there's a LOT GOIng on here. We've got Evel Knieval as the Time Traveler, wearing a sweet checked shirt under a... fishing vest? They've got the multiple-exposure thing to represent time travel we saw before, though here they at least added different poses. We've also got the flying numbers, though less subtle here. Oh, and our guy falls down through a vortex, over some geometric planes, some ruler markings or something, and the odd impression that the year 1970 will be important somehow.

More covers and note after the jump!

This one doesn't bother with original art, instead using a still from the classic 1960 film adaptation directed by George Pal. It's not precisely a movie tie-in, though; this is a Ventura edition from 1980, a full 20 years later. It's also interesting because of the blurb on the front, giving away pretty much every surprise the plot holds:

"Eight hundred and two thousand years into the future the night people called Morlocks kept the Eloi, happy, carefree people, to be consumed. And now the Morlocks were trying to catch the Time Traveller [sic] before he could turn on THE TIME MACHINE."

Yes, I know it's a bit ridiculous to complain about spoilers for a book that was 85 years old even then, but STILL.

And then we get into the combination of the public domain and electronic self-publishing:

This one, published through Createspace on Amazon in 2013 isn't terrible, I suppose. I mean, props for doing some research into the actual book, but it feels a little lazy to just cut and paste the first edition cover a couple of times. Also, "Herbert"? I know it's his name, but no one calls him that. At least include the "George" to make it more clear.

O... okay, good, close, there IS a sphinx in the book, yes, but not that one. Or in the past. Nor does the machine fly. This one, oddly published by "Classic H. G. Wells: The Time Machine; First Edition" and sold on Amazon, is "illustrated with stunning pictures of Wells and vintage flying machine" because, I suppose, pictures of vintage time machines were too hard to come by.

Okay seriously what is this. Sexy tattooed Weena, I assume. Feh.

All right, enough of that. Notes! Not much this time around, actually, and mostly commentary on his science. In Wells's far, far future, "the work of the tidal drag was done" (11:29), causing the Earth's rotation to stop. This has happened with many natural satellites in our solar system, including (as Wells points out) our own Moon. The force of gravity from the object being orbited slows down the orbiting body, until one side of the satellite faces the parent body at all times (which is why we always see the same side of the Moon). In the novel, this is because the Earth has been falling in towards the Sun, as per Sir George Darwin's theory, mentioned back in Chapter 5. The closer we get to the Sun, the idea goes, the slower our rotation would get, until we were tidally locked. In fact, at the time (and for many years afterwards) scientists thought that Mercury (the planet closest to the Sun) was tidally locked to the Sun, and science fiction stories often took place in the place of permanent twilight, where temperatures might be reasonable for humans. Eventually, it was discovered that Mercury just rotated so slowly that its day is longer than its year (though this is still due to the effects of tidal drag).

All of this happens in The Time Machine in a period of about thirty million years (16:25), which is almost laughably short compared to what we now know of the Earth's lifespan. While the Sun will eventually cool off, it'll happen some five billion years from now, and happen as it swells up into a red giant, which will eventually swallow the Earth up. In other words, we won't fall into the Sun; the Sun will come to get us.

Oh, and at 25:09 the Medical Man remarks, while examining the flowers TT brought back with him, that "the gynaeceum's odd." Now usually spelled "gynoecium," this refers to the "female" reproductive part of a plant that eventually develops into fruit and seeds.

All right, that's all for The Time Machine! The deleted scene will be up next, and then a new short story interlude. Thanks for listening!


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!