Wellsian Time Machines

Tag Area: Time Machine
Novel

The Time Machine

  • by H. G. Wells
  • serialized in New Review, (five parts, January to May 1895)
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:

[ul]
[li]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.”[/li]
[li]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).[/li]
[li]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).[/li]
[/ul]
—Michael Main
I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both hands, and went off with a thud.
First page of the original release of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells consisting of two long paragraphs.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Time Flies

After Susie Barton’s husband invested their nest egg in Time Ferry Services, Ltd., it appears that the only way she’ll ever get anything out of it is by giving a performance in Elizabethan times.

This is the earliest appearance of a time machine—the “Time Ball”—in film that we know of. And based on the name Time Ferry Services, Ltd, it may also be the earliest film mention of a time travel agency. —Michael Main
Normally, we drift with the current and travel downstream and into what we call the future. Now, if we equip our little boat with a motor, we can speed our passage downstream into the future or, breasting the current, travel upstream to view again those selfsame scenes that were passed by humanity ages ago.
A cartoonish Tommy Handley pops out of a porthole on a spherical time machine.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Serial Film

Brick Bradford

In fifteen episodes, Brick travels to the moon to protect a rocket interceptor while his pals take the time top to the 18th century to find a critical hidden formula. —Michael Main
Maybe tomorrow you’ll be visiting your great, great grandmother. 
With the moon and a winged spaceship behind him, Kane Richmond (as Brick Bradford) holds an atomic ray gun with Linda Johnson at his side.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Day of the Hunters

A midwestern professor tells a half-drunken story of time travel and the real cause of the dinosaur extinction. —Michael Main
Because I built a time machine for myself a couple of years ago and went back to the Mesozoic Era and found out what happened to the dinosaurs.
A woman in a red bathing/space suit and thigh-high boots wields a ray gun while carrying off an unconscious man.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Time Machine

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.
A torch-wielding Rod Taylor pushes Yvette Mimieux back as he holds off a hairy Morlock.
  • Eloi Gold Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Three Stooges Meet Hercules

Before George Pal’s version of The Time Machine hit the silver screen, actual time machines were a rarity in film. But afterwards, even Moe, Larry, and Curly could throw one together in an afternoon to take them, their pal Schuyler, and their Lady friend Diane back to ancient Greece where, among other things, they restore Ulysses to the crown, kill a pair of conjoined Cyclopes, impersonate Hercules, and attract the wrath of the real Hercules.

Side note: The trio of stooges are also the first time travelers we’ve seen in film who fret over changing the course of history. Who woulda thunk? —Michael Main
We helped the wrong army. We put a skunk on the throne of Ithaca.
Hercules drives a chariot across the sky while the stooges are up to their usual hijinx in the back.
  • Comedy
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Journey into Mystery #86

On the Trail of the Tomorrow Man

Zarrko, a mad time-machine-building scientist from 2262, believes that our nuclear weapons will enable him to take over the world of his time. He comes back to 1962 to steal one, and the Mighty Thor pursues him back to 2262.

The plot suffers from Alpha Centauri syndrome, where the time traveler might as well be from Alpha Centauri as from the future, but seeing the emergence of Kirby’s high-perspective artwork gives this issue a boost. In addition, the story provides a powerful image of the pre-Vietnam cold war era and its prevailing assumptions about the roles of women in society. —Michael Main
Ahhh—an ancient explosion of a nuclear bomb! The perfect device with which to conquer the twenty-third century!
The Mighty Thor flies through a fading time machine with the Tomorrow Man inside.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Yesterday Machine

  • written and directed by Russ Marker
  • (at movie theaters, USA, circa 1963)
Two decades after the end of World War II, Nazi Professor Ernst Von Hauser builds a time machine in the backwoods of Texas, and he’s got a plan to use it to change the outcome of the war: Start by bringing Confederate soldiers to the present; kidnap a wandering majorette; and finally send that nosy reporter Jim Crandell and his sidekick singer Sandy De Mar back to the past before bringing them back to be imprisoned.

As you may know, in the 1960s, the best way to present this kind of story was through an hour of snail-paced police procedural followed by detailed lectures from the mad professor. Oh, and also be sure to also send the majorette on a brief trip to the future, and keep a close eye on that brave Egyptian slave. —Michael Main
But just suppose, for the sake of argument, the Ellison kid did see two men from out of the past of 100 years ago. That would mean somebody around here is tampering with time.
Title card from the movie The Yesterday Machine, superimposed over a cheerleader and her boyfriend have a romantic nighttime walk.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Idaho Transfer

A group of secretive scientists develop time travel near Idaho’s Craters of the Moon, discovering a near-future apocalypse. Since anyone much over age 20 can’t survive traveling, they’re in the process of sending a group of young people, including Isa and her withdrawn sister Karen, beyond the apocalypse to rebuild civilization. Things go wrong (not the least of which are the plot, the dialogue, the acting, the sound track, and the requirement that the young Jane Fonda lookalikes must strip to travel through time), but even so, the film has a certain unprepossessing appeal. —Michael Main
You see, Dad and Lewis are trying to get it together, to secretly transfer a lot of young people into the future, bypassing the eco-crisis or whatever it is. Start a new civilization.
A partly-clothed man and a nude woman sit in front of a time machine and then disappear.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

The Time Machine

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.
John Beck (as the traveler) and Priscilla Barnes (as Weena) appear behind a triangular, metal time machine.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Time after Time

  • written and directed by Nicholas Meyer
  • (Toronto International Film Festival, 7 September 1979)
Apart from the hero in The Time Machine movie (1960), this is the earliest that I’ve seen of the H.G.‑Wells-as-time-traveler subgenre. Our hero chases Jack the Ripper into the 20th century. —Michael Main
Ninety years ago I was a freak; today I am an amateur.
Strobe images of a man in front of a giant stopwatch.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Mystery and Crime
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

The Toynbee Convector

You’ll enjoy this story, but I’ll give away no more beyond the quote below. By the way, if you get the original publication, you’ll also see Kurt Vonnegut and Marilyn Monroe. —Michael Main
What can I do to save us from ourselves? How to save my friends, my city, my state, my country, the entire world from this obsession with doom? Well, it was in my library late one night that my hand, searching along shelves, touched at last on an old and beloved book by H. G. Wells. His time device called, ghostlike, down the years. I heard! I understood. I truly listened. Then I blueprinted. I built. I traveled [. . .]
Futuristic white buildings with rounded corners, tall spires, and black stripes sit beside an hourglass on a pedestal.
  • Science Fiction
  • Time Phenomena
Feature Film

Timestalkers

After the death of his wife and child, Dr. Scott McKenzie stumbles upon a tintype photograph from the Old West showing three corpses, a shooter, and a modern Magnum 357, leading him to develop a theory of time travel that is confirmed when a beautiful woman from the future appears and takes him back to the Old West to chase the shooter, save President Cleveland, and pursue other obvious plot developments.

Spoiler: At the end, I believe that Georgia uses her time crystal to send Scott back for a do-over on the day of his family’s death. This is disappointing since up until that point, the film has set up a perfect example of a single, nonbranching timeline. —Michael Main
What if Cole came back to set off a chain of events that would eventually destroy the one man who stood in his way?
Gun-toting Lauren Hutton (as Georgia Crawford) and William Devane (as Scott McKenzie) look on as lightning comes out of Klaus Kinski (as Dr. Joseph Cole).
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Himself in Anachron

Tasco Magnon, time traveler, decides to take his new bride on his next trip through time—a quest to find the mythical Knot in Time—where the two of them get trapped, and only one can return.

After Smith’s death in 1966, the story was completed by his wife, Genevieve Linebarger, and sold to Harlan Ellison’s The Last Dangerous Vision, but that anthology was endlessly delayed. So in 1987, a translated version of the story was published in a French collection of Smith’s stories, and that was the first published version (although we’ve listed it as an English story, since that’s how it was written). The English version was finally published in Smith’s 1993 complete short science fiction collection by NESFA. By then, Ellison’s rights to the story had expired, although that didn’t stop him from suing NESFA. —Michael Main
‘Honeymoon in time,’ indeed. Why? Is it that your woman is jealous of your time trips? Don’t be an idiot, Tasco. You know that ship’s not built for two.
Spaceships float around a giant structure capped by a skull with spikey hair.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

The Turning Point

  • by Isaac Asimov
  • in The Drabble Project, edited by Rob Meades and David B. Wake (Beccon Publications, April 1988)
In exactly 100 words, Madison goes back in time to meet himself at the turning point of his young life.

Thanks to Marc Richardson for sending this one to me. —Michael Main
He was a clerk.
Lurid green cover for [_The Drabble Project_], listing all the authors of its 100-word stories.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Bill & Ted I

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

The Two Great Ones, Bill S. Preston, Esq., and Ted “Theodore” Logan, are the subjects of time-traveler Rufus’s mission, but instead they end up using his machine to write a history report to save their band, Wyld Stallyns. —Michael Main
Most excellent!
Alex Winter (A K A Bill) and Keanu Reeves (A K A Ted) sit on top of a phone booth crammed with Napoleon and other historical figures in orbit around Earth.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s03e06)

A Sound of Thunder

Bradbury himself wrote the teleplay for this first on-screen adaptation of his famous story, and somehow he managed to do it without the word “butterfly” appearing in the script (though we do see the critter at the end). —Michael Main
Travis: We might destroy a roach—or a flower, even—and destroy an important link in the species.

Eckles: So?
A gaping T rex shows its sharp teeth and red gums.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Back to the Future II

Back to the Future II

Doc Brown takes Marty and Jennifer from 1985 to 2015 to save their children from a bad fate, but the consequences pile up when Biff also gets in on the time-travel action. —Michael Main
The time-traveling is just too dangerous. Better that I devote myself to study the other great mystery of the universe—women!
Michael J. Fox (as Marty) and Christopher Lloyd (as Doc) check their watches beside the DeLorean in a lightning storm.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Back to the Future III

Back to the Future III

Marty and 1955-Doc travel back to the Old West where 1985-Doc is trapped along with various Biff ancestors and a possible love interest for Doc. —Michael Main
Doc: [blowing train whistle] I’ve wanted to do that my whole life!
Michael J. Fox (as Marty), Christopher Lloyd (as Doc), and Mary Steenburger (as Clara) in Western garb beside the DeLorean and a flaming train track.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Ray Bradbury Theater (s04e08)

The Toynbee Convector

At the end of Bradbury’s adaptation of his own earlier story, he adds a holo-twist that viewers of The Ray Bradbury Theater may have enjoyed. —Michael Main
Stiles: For years I brooded on it. I was in complete despair, and then one night, I was rereading H. G. Wells and his wonderful time machine, and then it struck me. “Eureka!” I cried, “I’ve found it. This [pounds book in hand] is my blueprint.”
James Whitmore (as one-hundred-thirty-five-year-old Craig Bennett Stiles) sits in his Wellsian time machine with bright bluish light streaming through the high windows behind him.
  • Science Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
Feature Film

Bill & Ted II

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey

Two Evil Robots from the future are out to destroy Bill & Ted and their babes. After all that, the Two Great Ones begin a journey that starts with Death and ends with Two Little Ones. —Michael Main
Look, after we get away from this guy, we use the booth. We time travel back to before the concert and set up the things we need to get him now.
Alex Winter (A K A Bill) and Keanu Reeves (A K A Ted) pressed up against a pane of glasss in this pre-release poster.
  • Science Fiction
  • Comedy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Strip

The Far Side

Oneupmanship

Professor Weinberg one-ups Professor DeWitt.
—Michael Main
A crew of Far Side characters construct two giant volumes titled The Complete Far Side.
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Time’s Arrow

A physicist with a dead girlfriend experiences various precognition episodes leading up to his attempt to travel to the past to undead the girlfriend, or at least plant the seeds for the precognition. —Michael Main
I’m certain I didn’t send myself any mail recently, but then again, I have plans to do so in the near future—or near past, I suppose.
Text from "Time
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Rocking My Dreamboat

Jameson is a jerk. He pretends to love his mother, with whom he shares a house. He discovers time travel via a Legoland Time Machine and uses it to destroy women who “dumped” him. Yep, this guy is a real “winner.” —Tandy Ringoringo
He looked at the sole red logo and decided it was the on button. He thought about where he’d like to be, and pushed.
A Lego man sits at the controls of a Lego time machine.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Story

Fiddle

Fiddles had not yet been invented during Nero’s time. So just how did that rumor get started? —Tandy Ringoringo
At any rate, ready your cameras and make sure your bows are rosined.
A young man sits on a hill over a city while a lander approaches in the sky with its huge mothership behind.
  • Eloi Honorable Mention
  • Science Fiction
  • Music and Musicals
  • Definite Time Travel
Short Film

The Palindrome Paradox

  • written and directed by Henry Burroughs
  • (Corona Fastnet Short Film Festival, Schull, Ireland, 23 May 2013)
Story checks out. We played the film backward and it’s identical to running it forward. And a form of time travel where one of the characters experiences time running backward. We won’t spoil things by telling you which character. —Michael Main
Inim-nordah redilloc eht dehsinif ev’uoy. Wow!
Mark Logan-Benn in a deerstalker hat faces a mussy-haired Mike Varty over a minature Hadron Collider on the kitchen table.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Picture Book

The Treehouse #5

The 65-Storey Treehouse

  • by Andy Griffiths (story) and Terry Denton (art)
  • (Macmillan Australia, August 2015)
Each installment of Andy and Terry’s Treehouse series sees the house grow upward, but what if the house never had a proper building permit? No problem, if you’ve got a time machine in a wheelie trash bin! Caution: Important detours along the way may be necessary to save antkind and The Time Machine. —Michael Main
“Don’t you see?” says Terry. “We’ll just travel back in time and get a permit for the treehouse.”
A Giant cartoon tree with a spiral staircase winding around it and dozens of entrances and crazy happenings.
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Families
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Episode

The Thundermans (s04e15)

Save the Past Dance

Superhero teens Phoebe and Max and their younger siblings have heard their parents tell a hometown hero legend once too often, so they “borrow” Cousin Blobbin’s time machine to find out the truth. But they manage to screw up the past and create a disaster in their own time, so they have to make a second round trip to sort it all out.

And just for fun . . . we get to see a flying pig three times! [Sadly, we have no Flying Pig tag. —the curator] —Tandy Ringoringo
If we see ourselves in the past, the whole universe could close in on itself. Watch a movie, you bookworm!
Jack Griffo (as Max) and Kira Kosarin (as Phoebe) pose in a leather jacket and poodle skirt for a 1950s dance.
  • Superhero
  • Comedy
  • Audience: Children
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Time Freak

  • written and directed by Andrew Bowler
  • (at movie theaters, Phillipines, 7 November 2018)
When Debbie breaks up with often-clueless physics genius Stillwell, he does the normal thing and invents a time machine for him and his friend to go back and fix every wayward relationship moment. —Michael Main
I just love the proofs and the equations and the whole riddle of it all.
Asa Butterfield and Sophie Turner stand nose-to-nose with their eyes closed with light drops falling around them.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Flash Fiction

Best. Scientist. EVER.

You head out on a quick, rollicking ride back through time, with an unknown pursuer and an ambiguous conclusion. —Tandy Ringoringo
You come to the conclusion that you can correct everything if you stop yourself before you steal the time machine.
Stylized outline of a rocket launching in a green circular seal for Daily Science Fiction.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel