Monday, March 07, 2022
The Time Machine
My wife has been reading through some of the classics in our library, and recently she offered her opinions about some of H.G. Wells' works. I realized that it's been decades since I've read this book and figured that needed to be remedied.
The Time Machine is one of the first time travel stories to use a mechanism to travel through time. The story starts with the protagonist, known only as "The Time Traveller", telling about his experiments to a group of friends. They all think he's hoaxing them, of course. At least until the next week when the friends come around for another dinner and find the Time Traveller bruised and disheveled. He shares with them a tale of a journey to the far future.
Like I said, it's been years since I read the story. The fact that I've forgotten a lot of it and that I've matured since then made it seem like I was reading a brand new book. It was far from the most exciting time travel story I've read, but I figured that it was probably a bit more "realistic" than most of the tales I've read. The story moves rather quickly for all that. Mr. Wells' characters are somewhat weak, but I had no problems visualizing his settings. Even if this tale wasn't a classic, I'd recommend y'all to check it out.
Labels: CheckItOut, HGWells
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
The Island of Doctor Moreau
This somewhat short novel tells the tale of a man, Edward Pendrick, who is shipwrecked and ends up on an island populated by one Dr. Moreau, his assistant Montgomery and a cadre of misshapen laborers. As the tale proceeds, we find out that Dr. Moreau is a surgeon performing experiments of questionable morality. And that's all I'm going to say. Now anyone who's into science fiction probably knows the details of the scenario. But on the off chance that you don't, I'll keep mum. After all, some of the story was spoiled for me because I read the introduction which was included in the edition I got from the library. The writer explained some of the allusions Wells had made in the book, so I was denied the pleasure of figuring them out for myself. (Assuming that I would have been able to, that is.) Anyway, Mr. Wells uses the tale to make some comments about his society. Overall it's a good tale, good enough to check out.
Labels: CheckItOut, HGWells
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