The Time Machine by H.G.Wells (1895) is probably one of the most famous sf stories published, certainly one of the first, and remains my favorite sf story of all time. The core of the story doesn't concern time travelling, which Wells uses as a science-fictional device, but Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Darwin's On the Origin of Species... had been published in 1859, just 36 years before The Time Machine saw print, and Wells explored its implications for the human species using pioneering sf techniques that were a bombshell to the Victorian mind. When writing, I sometimes have trouble with titles, but in this case the title of my story came first: "The Malicious Time Traveller's Dinner Party" just popped into my head. Soon I realised that the 'Time Traveller' of the title was THE 'Time Traveller', Wells's own. From then on, the story wrote itself.
From movies, books and fiction of the day, we're familiar with the Late Victorian world of the 1890s, and my story is peppered with references that link to Wells's own life. I had the advantage, as well, in that the drapery store that Wells suffered to work in as a teenager, and that he later wrote about in his book The History of Mr. Polly.(1910), was located in the neighborhood where I grew up, in Southsea, in Southern England. By my day, sadly, it was long gone, but the elegant Victorian and Edwardian villas still remain, and retain in that part of Southsea the genteel air of Wells's time.
Interesting! Thanks, Nigel! Be sure to check out "The Malicious Time Traveller's Dinner Party" and the rest of the stories on November 30, 2024!
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