H. G. Wells Books

This is not for the Wellsian novice: stick with a classics omnibus. Start with "The War of the Worlds," "The Time Machine," "The Invisible Man," "The Island of Dr. Moreau," or "The First Men In The Moon." This book is not that crucial for Wells-awareness or a survey.

This story, however, is a must for the fans of "The Time Machine" in all of its print and cinematic versions, or for a student of the process of creativity in a genius. This story is a rough-draft version of The Time Machine. Essentially this novella hammers down the concept, but not the detail, of "The Time Machine." You see this concept-forming especially in the last section of the novella "The Chronic Argo," which has the same arguments that Wells uses in Chapter One of "The Time Machine." The idea is clearly here, but his execution leaves much to be desired.

As a work of art, this novella is sub-spectacular. He uses a stock Victorian-Gothic mad scientist along the lines of Drs. Frankenstein or Caligari, or even his own Dr. Moreau. Jules Verne never had this problem, but this type of stereotyping was the hobgoblin of Wells earlier works. Personally, I picture Dr. Moses Nebogipfel as the unnamed Time Traveler's uncle or rival cousin, as opposed to being the same person.

Additionally, you see Wells anti-religiosity become very apparent with the rival Rev. Elijah Ulysses Cook. The good reverend and the good doctor are both mad scientists in their own spheres and elements, but Dr. Nebogipfe clearly has the upper hand: he raptures the reverend into the future with his time machine, as opposed to the reverend translating the good doctor into the kingdom of the dear Son. For a Christian, we are stuck with Lewis's "Space Trilogy."

But $12.44 for a 48 page book? Come on! Print it out yourself from one the on-line sources, and give the remainder to charity.

This was a very poor sequel to H.G. Wells' classic 1895 book "The Time Machine." I recommend it for only the most ardent fans of the original and suggest others to skip it.

Friedell's work was originally written in the 1940's in German and translated into English in the 1970's. Because Wells was still alive at the time of writing, Friedell begins his narrative with fictitous correspondence between himself and Wells and then between himself and the Time Traveler who was supposedly still living in London. The Time Traveler reveals his other mishaps with time travel--an ill-fated trip to 1995.

There are many problems with this book. First, Friedell has no underlying message for society as did Wells. The story is frivolous. It spends too much time talking about the pseudo-scientific difficulties of time travel without saying anything of benefit for real thought. Second, like many early SF writers, Friedell does not place his story far enough into the future for sustained believablity. According to the book, the London of 1995 is suspended high in the clouds and the earth is tended by holographic gardners. Wells at least put his story way way into the distant future. Lastly, the book does not pick up where Wells concluded--with the Time Traveler having disappeared without word since. There is no word of the Eloi or Morlocks, about the progress of humankind toward similiar or divergent ends, or even about travels into the past. The Time Traveler of Friedell's book is content to take a few short jonts, meet a woman, and give up time traveling in favor of playing husband.

For a better sequel to H.G. Well's original, see Baxter's book "Time Ships" (1995).

The poor quality of this book is indicated by the author's statement that I did not attempt to contact Martha Gellhorn during my research for a biography of her Even a cursory reading of the first edition of Nothing Ever Happens to the Brave: The Story of Martha Gellhorn shows that I did indeed contact Gellhorn, and that I received a reply. Correction: The author of this book points to an error in my comment on it. Lynn did not write that I failed to contact Gellhorn; rather she speculated that perhaps I did not ask for an interview. Readers of my Gellhorn biography (first edition) can have little doubt that I intended to interview Gellhorn. But more to the point, for a writer to speculate that perhaps I did not ask for an interview is slipshod. All she had to do was contact me to resolve any doubts she had.

I bought this book expecting little; the company that released this title released dozens of others on the same day. Whenever you see a small company trying to do such a large scale item dump, you have to be weary.

The first thing you notice in this book is that it is a cheap copy of, apparently, the Webster version of the book. Only without, you know, looking like a the type of quality you'd expect from Websters.

The second thing is that this was obviously NOT WRITTEN BY A GUY THAT SPEAKS FARSI and is, in fact only using a dictionary (perhaps Websters?) The letters in the words are right to left, as they should be, but THE WORDS ARE LEFT TO RIGHT. so they are technically correct, only almost impossible to read.

The third thing is that the publisher apparently has extremely good eyesight and expects the same from his readers. The Persian terms at the bottom of the pages are tiny; about size 4 font. Also, the words are stretched worse then any streching I've seen before now making it truly painful to read any of the Persian word list.

The Fourth issue is that they must have expected longer pages because they actually cut off the last line or so (who knows, there not there to count) of the Persian word list of each page.

In short, the idea is great; a good American book with some Persian vocabulary on the bottom of the page. Only the idea was so poorly executed as to make the idea worthless. I've worked in language libaries and I've never before seen a book this amazingly thoughtlessly put together.