H. G. Wells's Perennial Time Machine - by George Slusser & Patrick Parrinder & Danièle Chatelain (Paperback)

About the Book

This collection of essays offers a series of original, penetrating, and wide-ranging perspectives on Wells's masterpiece by an international group of major Wells and science fiction scholars. The authors explore such textual topics as the narrative techniques and mythological undertones.

Book Synopsis

Acclaimed as a work of genius when first published in 1895, The Time Machine represents a revolution in storytelling. H. G. Wells's first--and greatest--novel has been recognized worldwide as a founding text of the science fiction genre and one of the most seminal narratives of the last hundred years.

This collection of essays offers a series of original, penetrating, and wide-ranging perspectives on Wells's masterpiece by an international group of major Wells and science fiction scholars. The authors explore such textual topics as the narrative techniques and mythological undertones of the novel as well as its contribution to modern ideas of time and evolution and its focusing of the intellectual cross-currents of the late nineteenth century. This insightful volume captures the innovative imagination, richness, and fascinating ambiguity that resulted in a classic literary work and demonstrates that Wells's novel is both a visionary story and an unstoppable idea.

Review Quotes

The volume highlights the startling singularity of Wells's text as well as its literary genealogy out of a variety of modes and genres. It provides an archeology of the text on the one hand, and on the other an exploration of how this text continues to project itself into the future as an influential textual artifact. The essays will be useful to anyone studying or teaching The Time Machine, offering as they do a range of critical approaches from Wells scholars, as well as a contribution from science fiction author Brian Aldiss.-- "Utopian Studies"

This volume is must reading for anyone interested in Wells or the development of science fiction in general.-- "Virginia Quarterly Review"

About the Author

George Slusser is a professor of comparative literature and director of the Eaton Program for Science Fiction and Fantasy Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Patrick Parrinder is a professor of English at the University of Reading, England, and is a vice president of the H. G. Wells Society. Daniele Chatelain is a professor of French at the University of Redlands.