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The Internet Time Travel Database

H. G. Wells

writer

The Chronic Argonauts

by H. G. Wells
Wells abandoned this early version of the story after three installments. He may not have liked it, but it’s a fun historical read—and the first mention that I’ve seen of time as the fourth dimension.
— Michael Main
Those who were there say that they saw Dr. Nebogipfel, standing in the toneless electric glare, on a peculiar erection of brass and ebony and ivory; and that he seemed to be smiling at them, half pityingly and half scornfully, as it is said martyrs are wont to smile.
“The Chronic Argonauts” by H. G. Wells, serialized in The Science School Journal, three parts [or possibly only two (with none in May], April to June 1888).

The National Observer Essays

by H. G. Wells
After his first fictional foray into time travel (“The Chronic Argonauts”), Wells anonymously published a series of seven fictionalized essays in The National Observer that contained the genesis of what was to come.
— Michael Main
‘Possibly not,’ said the Philosophical Inventor. ‘But now you begin to see the object of my investigations into the geometry of four dimensions. I have a vague inkling of a machine—’
The National Observer Essays by H. G. Wells, 7-part serial, National Observer, 17 March 1894 to 23 June 1894 [nonconsecutive issues].

The Time Machine

by H. G. Wells
In which H. G. Wells’s third foray into time travel finalizes the story of our favorite unnamed Traveller and his machine, all in the form that we know and love.

The two earlier forays were The Chronic Argonaut (which was abandoned after three installments in his school magazine) and seven fictionalized National Observer essays (which sketched out the Traveller and his machine, including a glimpse of the future and proto-Morlocks). The story of The Time Machine itself had three 1895 iterations:

[list][*]A five-part serial in the January through May issues of New Review, The serial contains mostly the story as we know it, but with an alternate chunk in the introduction where the Traveller discusses free will, predestination, and a Laplacian determinism of the universe.

In addition, material from Chapter XIII of the serial (just over a thousand words beginning partway through the first paragraph of page 577 and continuing to page 579, line 29) were omitted from later editions. This section was written for the serial after a back-and-forth written struggle between Wells and New Review editor William Henley. The material had a separate mimeographed publication by fan and Futurian Robert W. Lowndes in 1940 as “The Final Men” and has since had multiple publications elsewhere with varying titles such as “The Gray Man.”[/*]

[*]The US edition: The Time Machine: An Invention, by H. G. Wells (erroneously credited as H. S. Wells in the first release), Henry Holt [publisher], May 1895. This edition may have been completed before the serial, as it varies from the serial more so than the UK edition. It does not contain the extra material in the first chapter or “The Final Men” (although it does have a few additional sentences at that point of Chapter XIII).[/*]

[*]The UK edition: The Time Machine: An Invention,by H. G. Wells, William Heinemann [publisher], May 1895. This edition is a close match to the serial, with the exception of chapter breaks, the extra material in the first chapter, and “The Final Men” (omitted from what is now Chapter XIV).[/*]
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— Michael Main
I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both hands, and went off with a thud.
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, serialized in New Review, (five parts, January to May 1895).

The Plattner Story

by H. G. Wells
“The Plattner Story” by H. G. Wells, in New Review, April 1896.

The Man Who Could Work Miracles

by H. G. Wells
When George McWhirter Fotheringay discovers that he can work miracles by sheer force of will, the results are wont to bring unexpected consequences, leading to one final miracle that invokes time travel.
— Michael Main
As he struggled to get his shirt over his head, he was struck with a brilliant idea. “Let me be in bed,” he said, and found himself so. “Undressed,’ he stipulated; and, finding the sheets cold, added hastily, ’and in my nightshirt—ho, in a nice soft woolen nightshirt. Ah!” he said with immense enjoyment. “And now let me be comfortably asleep . . .”
”The Man Who Could Work Miracles: A Pantoum in Prose” by H. G. Wells, Illustrated London News, Summer 1898.

When the Sleeper Wakes

by H. G. Wells
When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells, serialized in The Graphic, 7 January to 6 May 1899.

The New Accelerator

by H. G. Wells
The narrator and Professor Gibberne test the professor’s potion that will speed up their metabolisms by a factor of a thousand or more.
— Michael Main
I sat down. “Give me the potion,” I said. “If the worst comes to the worst it will save having my hair cut, and that I think is one of the most hateful duties of a civilized man. How do you take the mixture?”
“The New Accelerator” by H. G. Wells, Strand Magazine, December 1901.

The Dream

by H. G. Wells
The Dream by H. G. Wells, serialized in The Pall Mall Magazine, October to December 1923.

The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper

by H. G. Wells
A copy of the Evening Standard newspaper makes its way from 1971 back to one Mr. Brownlow in 1931, and the narrator relates to us the queer happenings from forty years in the future. Would that the political aspects of his world would have materialized!
It means, I take it, that in only forty years from now the great game of sovereign states will be over. It looks also as if the parliamentary game will be over, and as if some quite new method of handling human affairs will have been adopted. Not a word of patriotism or nationalism; not a word of party, not an allusion. But in only forty years! While half the human beings already alive in the world will still be living! You cannot believe it for a moment. Nor could I, if it wasn't for two little torn scraps of paper.
“The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper” by H. G. Wells, in Ladies’ Home Journal, February 1932.

The Man Who Could Work Miracles

by Lajos Biró, directed by Lotar Medes and Alexander Kroda
The Man Who Could Work Miracles by Lajos Biró, directed by Lotar Medes and Alexander Kroda (at limited movie theaters, London, 23 July 1936).

The Final Men

by H. G. Wells
The first complete, published version of The Time Machine appeared as a five-part serial in the January through May 1895 issues of New Review, edited by William Ernest Henley. In the introduction to the 1924 edition, Wells wrote about the back-and-forth between himself and Henley, saying that “There was a slight struggle between the writer and W.E. Henley who wanted, he said, to put a little ‘writing’ into the tale.”

One piece of that writing was a short episode after the Traveller leaves the Eloi and the Morlocks, just before visiting the red sun and the end of the world. This episode was deleted from both the American (Holt text) and the British (Heinemann text) published book editions of the novel, but it did appear as a 7-page mimeographed and stapled publication from American fan and Futurian Robert W. Lowndes in 1940, and it appeared in a number of other places, sometimes called “The Grey Man” and once called “The Missing Pages.”

No doubt, too, the rain and snow had long since washed out the Morlock tunnels. A nipping breeze stung my hands and face. So far as I could see there were neither hills, nor trees, nor rivers: only an uneven stretch of cheerless plateau.
“The Final Men” by H. G. Wells (Robert W. Lowndes, March 1940).

The Time Machine

by Robert Barr, [director unknown]
The first TV broadcast of The Time Machine, a little less than an hour, came live from the BBC’s Studio A at Alexandra Palace on 25 Jan 1949 with a second revised broadcast on 21 Feb 1949.

Seeing as how there are no recordings of the broadcast, I wish I had my own time machine so I could send my Betamax® back to 1949.

— Michael Main
Thomas Sheridan in Fantasy Review: In the first showing, after a brief interval in which the hands of the wall-clock recorded the passing of many hours, the lights began to dip and rise to indicate the passage of the days, and as this effect speeded up the walls of the room gradually dissolved. In the second performance this was cut out, killing the impression of fast-moving time. But, outside, the sun moves ever more swiFTLy across the sky until it is a continuous band of light, rising and falling to indicate the equinoxes, and throwing into vivid relief the changing shapes of successions of buildings which become more startlingly futuristic as the Traveller flashes through the ages.
The Time Machine by Robert Barr, [director unknown] (BBC Television, UK, 25 January 1949).

The Time Machine

by David Duncan, directed by George Pal
The Traveller now has a name—H. George Wells (played by Rod Taylor)—and Weena has the beautiful face and talent of Yvette Mimieux.
— Michael Main
When I speak of time, I’m speaking of the fourth dimension.
The Time Machine by David Duncan, directed by George Pal (at limited movie theaters, Rome, 25 May 1960).

The Time Machine

by Wallace Bennett, directed by Henning Schellerup
For me, the update to the 1970s took this made-for-TV movie too far away from the original novel. For example, the Traveller (now a rocket scientist called Neil Perry) explains the workings of the machine with gibberish, whereas the original Traveller expressed himself with up-to-date mathematical terminology. The travel to the Salem witch trials and the California gold rush were also off the mark, as was the dreamy Weena who immediately speaks English.
— Michael Main
Well, in principle, it utilizes a electromagnetic force field to molecularly reconstruct the space-time continuum.
The Time Machine by Wallace Bennett, directed by Henning Schellerup (NBC-TV, USA, 5 November 1978).

The Time Machine

by John Logan, directed by Simon Wells
This version (definitely not your grandfather’s time machine) has imaginative settings, but for me, the refactored plot was all dramatic music and no substance.
— Michael Main
You built your time machine because of Emma’s death. If she had lived, it would never have existed. So how could you use your machine to go back in time and save her? You are the inescapable result of your tragedy, just as I am the inescapable result of you. You have your answer. Now go.
The Time Machine by John Logan, directed by Simon Wells (premiered at an unknown movie theater, Los Angeles, 4 March 2002).

The Time Traveller: Voyage across the Four Winds

by Irving Ravetch, [director unknown]
Using the Four Winds Sims animation packet and pieces of the Radio Theatre Group’s audio play of The Time Machine (based on the 1948 Escape radio program), Celestial Elf produced an eight-minute animation. Looks like they had fun.
— Michael Main
with grateful thanks to H.G. Wells for his Inspiration & to Koshari Mahana for use of Four Winds
The Time Traveller: Voyage across the Four Winds by Irving Ravetch, [director unknown] (Vimeo: Celectial Elf Channel, 26 September 2010).

Absolutely Anything

by Terry Jones and Gavin Scott, directed by Terry Jones
As a test to determine whether humanity should be destroyed, four slimey aliens grant schoolteacher Neil Clarke the power to do absolutely anything. I kinda think that if I had that power, and I made as many mistakes as Neil, I'd be using my power to rewind time more often than he did.

Writer and director Terry Jones acknowledges H. G. Wells’ “The Man Who Could Work Miracles” as inspiration for the story.

— Michael Main
Neil [wavinghand]: Let the explosion never to have happened.
Absolutely Anything by Terry Jones and Gavin Scott, directed by Terry Jones (at movie theaters, Philippines and elsewhere, 12 August 2015).
as of 3:20 a.m. MDT, 6 May 2024
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