5/12/2023 0 Comments The time machine wells![]() ![]() the Time Traveller wandering, accompanied by the elfin Weena, through the ruins of a vast abandoned Natural History Museum.the horror of the underground world inhabited by the filthy, white ape-like Morlocks.VividĪnd nobody who’s read it can forget the tremendous scenes he conjures up – Given that the Pan paperback text starts on page seven, it’s gone from nothing to details of his time travelling adventures in twelve swift pages. We are plunged straight into a discussion of the theory of time before, a few pages later, he shows them a small time machine (p.13), before then (p.16) exhibiting the nearly completed full-size machine itself, and then – a mere week, and three pages, later (p.19), his friends, assembled for the usual Thursday evening dinner, gasp as he staggers dramatically through the door, and tells the assembled guests his extraordinary story. Not only is it short, but it moves at a cracking pace, the opening words introducing us to the (anonymous) Time Traveller in conversation with his dinner guests. ![]() It takes as long to read as the average movie to watch. It gets in, makes its sensational statement, and is all over while you’re still reeling. Shortīarely 90 pages in the Pan paperback version, at 33,000 words The Time Machine is comparable in length and ‘grip’ to the first Sherlock Holmes novels or The Strange Case of Dr. Why is this, Wells’s first novella, such a classic? At least in part because it is short, pacy and vivid. ![]()
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