Novel
The Panchronicon
- by Harold Steele MacKaye
- (Charles Scribner’s Sons, April 1904)
In 1898, Copernicus Droop has a flying time machine drop into his lap from the year 2582, whereupon he hatches a plan to take Rebecca Wise and her sister, Phœbe, back to 1876 where he can invent all kinds of modern things and Rebecca might convince her younger self to marry that fine young Joe Chandler—but instead they go rather further back to Elizabethan times where capricious capers (but no time paradoxes) ensue. —Michael Main
It does sound outlandish, when you think how big the world is. But what if ye go to the North Pole? Ain’t all the twenty-four meridians jammed up close together around that part of the globe? Ain’t it clear that if a feller’ll jest take a grip on the North Pole and go whirlin’ around it, he’ll be cutting meridians as fast as a hay-chopper? Won’t he see the sun getting left behind and whirlin’ the other way from what it does in nature? If the sun goes the other way round, ain’t it sure to unwind all the time that it’s been a-rollin’ up?
