The Time Ships

At first the writing seemed much like that of HG Wells. The first person narrative, the quaint language, and the introspection. There was an attempt to make the story consistent with modern science, but then it became very preachy with alternate universes created by reason of his first voyage into time. WWI never ends, and the Germans are bombing London with nuclear bombs, but London is protected by a giant dome. The war starts extending into time battles, and the result is that a colony is established before the dinosaur, which completely rearranges the development of history. Men go to the stars, but devolve into some sort of metallic pyramids that maintain a universal cosmic consciousness. They try to alter time which leads us to a theory of multi universes. HG eventually ends up with Weena of the Eloi, and is motivated to somehow instruct the Eloi and the Morlachs to cooperate with each other to reestablish civilization. The story is supposed to finish with a summary of an expedition into the Morlach caves, but there is no summary leaving one with the impression that it was a failed expedition. I found the book vaguely boring although well written. It was full of introspection into the foibles of mankind with a doomsday outlook. It's not a happy story.

Very solid story for a sequel to a science fiction classic. This book completes the Time Traveler's story in a very satisfying way.

HG Wells' Time Machine has always been one of my favorite books; the granddaddy of time travel, if you will. Stephen Baxter has written a sequel and he does a good job of adopting the tone and "voice" of the original. To be honest I loved how the book began, and then I almost put it down when the story got bogged down in late 1930s war-torn London. It just seemed to go on forever. I picked it back up a few days later to follow his journey way back in time, well before humans existed. That part of the story, detailing his struggle to live along with a few others, really capitvated me. And then I almost put it down again as he and his Morlock friend (long story) went way ahead in the future. Just tough to follow and believe. And it concluded in sort of a satisfactory way. Good winter reading -- but I found myself skipping over several tedious sections.

To be sure, there is really no way to recreate a classic. If the original author did not write a sequel, then there just may not be one. In fact, some stories need no sequel (Napoleon Dynamite), or if a sequel is done, it is never up to snuff (Return to Oz, Ghostbusters II). Added to that is "The Time Machine"'s status as an ace of aces, not to mention the wonderful George Pal film version done in 1960. In sequalizing a classic, Baxter has everything going against him.Despite all of this, I think he succeeds. Not just in imitating Wells's voice, but in all aspects.To begin, this book has some prerequisites. To be sure, you need to read  The Time Machine (Penguin Classics) , and to track down the missing part to chapter 11--alluded to on p.103ff. You will also do well to track down  The Chronic Argonauts , the early draft version of "The Time Machine." Watch the names Moses and Nebogipfel! Additionally, "The Time Ships" includes several Wellsian inside-jokes. These are references to several of his lesser-know works: "The World Set Free," (p. 157ff) "Things to Come," (both the book and the movie), and the quick nod to "War of Worlds" with the virus discussion (p. 284ff), and "The First Men in the Moon" with the selenites. I think some of the book's criticism comes from missing these subtle allusions.(I recommend seeing the 1960's movie BEFORE reading this book, and seeing the 2002 version AFTER reading this book).By including these easter eggs, Baxter's time travel story double-backs to its roots. The first two time travels stores, Wells's and Twain's  A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Tor Classics) , were works of social criticism, with Twain's included the expected satire. Baxter, by including allusions to Wells's utopian future histories, brings back to square one. This is refreshing. So much of popular time travel stories are just variations on the Grandfather Paradox (The City on the Edge of Foreve, Back To the Future, every episode of Star Trek: Voyager). This book, however, uses time travel as a type of social commentary (akin to Star Trek IV), but on a scale reminiscent of Olaf Stapleton (Last and First Man, the Star-Makers, The Nebula-Makers).Of course here and there it has a feel of "Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing," but so does Wells's work. "War of the Worlds" ends in a Deus Ex Machina, and the Time Traveler abandon Weena in the fire and zips on to 30 million years into the future. The flaws reminds us of Wells's flaws.The tone/setting of the story also zigzags, almost chiasmically . We start with Wells's setting, then go to the high concept of Morlocks 2.0, then back to Wells's England, then to a steam-punk/pulp 1930's "World Set Free" time line, then back to Jurassic Park/Robinson Crusoe for Humanity 3.0, the New Humans, the to the high concept of the Constructors, and end up in full circle at the correct ending of "The Time Machine." What a ride! What a vision! C. S. Lewis would have loved this book!Indeed, as I read books 5 and 6, I felt joy. For those of us who felt let down by the direction of Clarke's 2001 series ( 3001 The Final Odyssey  in particular), rest assured that Baxter delivers on the promise Clarke failed to keep, If you see the Time Traveler as Dave Bowman, and Nebogipfel as HAL 9000 (both are cyclopean), and the Constructors as the Monoliths (they were originally pyramids in "The Sentinel"), then you see my point. Plagiarism, no! An unfulfilled promise finally met, yes, yes, yes.This book has been one of the most refreshing, and invigorating books I have read in recent years. If you have lost faith in SF, read this book and welcome home!*PS- If you were confused by Star Trek: Enterprise's "Temporal Cold War," I assume they got the idea from this book.

H.G. Wells' Time Machine was simply visionary. Baxter follow up on his story with such intelligence and keeps the spirit of Wells' characters on course as our time traveler returns to the future.The way I first found this book was on a road trip as a teen. There was a welcome center along the way that had a book swap set up. I don't recall if I had a book I could swap at the time, but I remember being intrigued by the title, cover art, and description on the back to the point that I just took it.What a fantastic chance occurrence. It became one of my most beloved books of all time, and I'm nearly 40 now.If you have read The Time Machine and are on the fence about this book, please consider giving it a chance. It is one of the best explorations of the concept of time travel I have ever read... and I simply adore the concept of time travel!

I was skeptical about the premise of this book. How could one attempt to create a believable sequel to a book written in 1895? Glad I gave it a read, I was impressed that the author captured the feel and flow of the original even down to a pretty amazing recreation of the language and idioms of the period. Had I not known it wasn't written in the same time period as the original I may not have guessed. I enjoyed the depth and pacing of the story and would definitely recommend it to any fan of the Original HG Wells tale.

This was a good sequel to one of my favorite classic novels. However, it seemed as if the author used the Great Illustrated Classics edition of the book to write this sequel.

An absolutely riveting read. Hugely original and beautifully written, this is a highly intelligent sequel to HG Wells "The Time Machine" which deserves all its accolades including those from such luminaries as Arthur C Clarke.At heart, this is a pastiche of the Victorian/Edwardian ripping yarn genre, in the very best style of that tradition. Scientific and philosophical ideas interweave with some beautiful passages of writing, particularly the descriptions of the vertiginous experience of time travel itself, the immensity of space and of the time scales involved, the vast structures that arise out of future interstellar space engineering, and the emergent life-forms millennia hence. I must confess to always having had a bit of a problem with the theory of multiple universes and my heart sank when early on it became evident that this was going to be crucial to the plot but, happily, the story-telling transcends this quibble. Likewise, I became a little lost towards the end by talk of space/time boundaries, optimal and sub-optimal multiple histories, and the circularity of Time - and God only knows who The Watchers were! But I was always willingly carried forward on the bright, buoyant wave of the story and the way it was told.Baxter is able to keep the first person narrative perspective of the Victorian original, presenting the advanced scientific concepts encountered along the way via the ingenious plot device of giving the central character a highly intelligent travelling companion, picked up unwittingly early on in the story from a trip thousands of years into the future. This is Nebogipfel, no less a character than a Morlock from the original book, but a Morlock from before the time his race degenerated and went underground. Unimaginable advances in scientific and social evolution make him a sort of cool, calm "Spock" character whom the reader, and the inventor himself, gradually warm to, in spite of his physically unattractive exterior, as the novel develops.I disagree with the reviewer who found the relationship between Nebogipfel and the inventor coldly distant. They are indeed literally aliens to one another and the inventor is never quite able to overcome his repulsion at the sight, feel and smell of Nebogipfel. The highly advanced Morlock for his part finds it hard not to treat The inventor with scornful impatience. Nevertheless, a strangely affecting relationship does develop as our main character becomes increasingly respectful of his travelling companion's intellect and integrity. They care for one another at various points in the book and at the end, as they hurtle back towards the Dawn of Time, the terrified inventor puts his hand in that of Nebogipfel and trusts him to see him through this apocalyptic event."Nebogipfel? Can you still hear me?""I am here..."The book made me reconsider my attitude towards the idea of artificial life forms as being both humankind's heir and legacy, for do they not spring from mankind's ability to invent and manufacture minds immeasurably superior to their own? In that sense, imagined lifeforms such as The Morlocks, who no longer reproduce physically but extrude their progeny from the all-providing floor that their race walks upon, and the metallic, pyramidal Constructors who have forsaken individual existence and have Mind as their organising principal, have evolved from us and are mankind's children. This is a refreshing contrast to current attitudes to "artificial" life which are usually expressed as "the robots are taking over!".The overall effect of the book was to remind me of how small we are, how temporary is our presence here on this planet, and what an infinitesimally small space of time not just we, but our planetary surroundings, occupy in the scheme of things. The central character's epiphany towards the end of the book sweeps the reader into a new and vast perspective of Life, The Universe and Everything:"The starlight was all about me, deep, unending... In an infinite and eternal universe I saw there is no centre; there can be no Beginning, no End. Each event, each point, is rendered identical to every other by the setting within which it is placed... In an infinite universe, I had become infinitesimal."The ending of HG Wells book "The Time Machine" is picked up and developed in a most satisfactory way at the conclusion of the book, to include an explanation (with political overtones which I am sure HG Wells himself would have approved of) of the divergence of the strands of humanity which develop into the Eloi and Morlock peoples.A tremendous feat of the imagination which makes me want to explore more Stephen Baxter.

I thought the book was interesting, at least for the first third after which it tended to get a bit bogged down in long explanations of physics and a rather predictable plot. It ended satisfactorily but it was easy to figure out where it was going a long way back. I would have like to have seen more versions of earth than the war zone that it rather dwelt upon.

While some of Baxter's politics sneak in here and there and pollute Wells' style of work, the story is very interesting (if long-winded and over-explanitory at parts), and I really enjoy the character of Nebogipfel, except for the incessant bleating of the main character about how he smells, etc, which makes me feel he is 'racist to neo-Morlocks' as it were.I love the weirdness of the personalities of the main char vs. Nebogipfel, and the shock of neo-Morlocks being born from the ground, and the sick warpedness of them dealing with the Universal Constructors and the Watchers. The alternate realities of the nuclear age and the island commune and the intrusion of 'The Land Ironclads' into the tale were not as exciting as the space-travel/dimensional voyage stuff.

I'm a big fan of late-Victorian sci-fi, and H.G. Wells in particular. I was excited about reading this authorised sequel to The Time Machine. Sadly, when I finished it the overwhelming feeling was one of relief.H.G. Wells used to have a single great idea and then write a novella about it. Unfortunately, this novel is a doorstopper that seems to be rammed full of every possible idea the author could think of. He does a fairly good job of replicating the language and sense of adventure of the Victorian sci-fi novel, but does go a little too far at times. He also rams in historical figures just to make a point and give us a nudge. Sometimes it's a touch inaccurate and / or inappropriate in my view. There seemed to be a lot of this 'because I can' content in the writing -hence my feeling of relief that I'd finally reached the end.

For years I have put off buying this book as The Time Machine is one of my all time favourite books, and I didn't want anything to come along and spoil my own ideas of what happens at the end.However, this book was mind blowing and almost impossible to put down. Very pleased with this sequel. The Massacre of Mankind is upstairs waiting to be read now.