The Time Machine

[magenta]

Several weeks ago, I saw the movie "The Time Machine" on cable for the first time in many years. I decided I needed to re-read the book, since I had probably been high school when I last read it.

So I stopped on the third floor (I work in the Minneapolis Library) and looked for it a few days later. I found an interesting edition.

You have to understand, I am a book freak and bibliophile of a particular sort. I like books as physical objects as well as things to read.

I found, rebound in library buckram, the 1931 edition of "The Time Machine" with an introduction by H.G.Wells, and Art Deco decorations and drawings. This is a novelette, rather than a novel, and they had to "pad it out" somehow, even then. So there is a long explanation by Wells, looking back to when he wrote it, and how the world had changed. And the artwork is wonderful, if you like Art Deco as much as I do. It was quite a find.

I thought about how much of a time machine that volume is, the physical book. The text was from 1895, when Wells was a young man, and relatively unknown writer. The introduction was from 1931, when he was an old man, successful in his own way. I read it the first time probably in the 1960s or early 1970s. And now I was rereading it, a mature woman, in 2003. How much have things changed since 1895, 1931, 1970? And how much has our perspective and predictions for the future changed?

We don't have flying cars, and the vid-phones we do have are tiny portable ones. We don't have a moon base.

But microwave ovens and hand-held computers are commonplace, and some cell phones are made to look like Star Trek communicators.

As for "The Time Machine", I returned it today. It should be back on the shelf in a few days, if anyone else wants to look for it.

Comments

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed reading this.