The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and Selected Short Stories, Complete and Unabridged

Wells, H.G.

Published by Platt & Munk, 1963

About this Item

.The Time Machine is not only a fantastic adventure. The Morlocks of the year are a physical menace to the hero, true, but they also frighten us by showing what man might become. The fact that these fears are still with us undoubtedly helps to give Wells his extraordinary air of modernity. And yet-none of this would matter in the least without the peculiar thrill conveyed by the actual narrative, the events themselves. How is it that Well's marvels lay such close hold on us? Because we are made to feel that they are possible. Plenty of amazing things happen in Hans Christian Andersen's stories, but nobody seriously believes in them. Even Edgar Allan Poe's tales often give a feeling of unreality. Well's secret-and a valuable heritage passed on to later writers of science fiction-was to lay the fantastic and the fabulous side by side with the everyday, even the humdrum. Thus the outlandish doings of the Martians in The War of the Worlds are recounted in a soberly factual, documentary style, with times and places quoted almost in manner of a military communique. Whether or not we know the area in which the first invaders appear (the western part of the county of Surrey, roughly twenty-five miles from London), we are convinced that Wells knew it intimately. In the same way, Wells induces us to accept his Time Machine by the very matter-of-fact atmosphere of the opening scenes. And the Time Traveler himself is no mystic or scientific super genius, but a cheerful talkative, rather ordinary chap like you and me. Even Wells's short stories use this method now and again. The hero of "In the Abyss" is prosaic as the Time Traveler, and the technology we hear about at the beginning puts us in the frame of mind in which the strange creatures on the sea bottom seem not impossible. Notice too the severely scientific terminology in the description of the first specimen encountered. (part of the Foreword by Kingsley Amis, Cambridge England, Marco 1963) .There is realism in The Time Machine, but there is poetic feeling too. The picture of a dying world near the end is one of the most haunting visions of desolation and loneliness in all literature. Then there is the infectious lightness and dryness of "The Truth About Pyecraft." From time travel to space travel, from interplanetary communication to global disaster-he seems to have invented it all.

Seller Inventory # 001045

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and Selected Short Stories, Complete and Unabridged
• Publisher: Platt & Munk
• Publication Date: 1963
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket