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Astute and accurate analysis, John...


Arrrgheeerm... My, it seems I'm continuing to develop a peeve... Audiobooks! errrffff. What if YOU had read it, John? Like. Words on Paper? <Stomp twitch fume>

(Aggravated, of course, by your last comment on the "reader." YOU are the READER, allegedly... Who is this "Brick" Yahoo?)

<Alex goes all Rumplestiltskin. He's not sure why....>
edited by Alex on 11/5/2009

Because it's a fucking novella. Don't take an hour to read. I read to my kids. My parents read to me. Do you get a back scratch and a hair-rumple with this "Brick" bucko?

Oh well. Jaded old fart that I am... I just can't grok this business of people having their car stereo read to them. Powerful prose, indeed.

Hope you don't nod off.

};-}
edited by Alex on 11/5/2009

I first read it after, or maybe it was while, researching H. G. Wells. I was worried about that because my research had led me to decide I disliked H. G. Wells a good deal. I have a feeling I'd get along with him roughly as well as I did Lucius Shepard so I worried maybe I couldn't give it a fair reading and would hate it even if it was good.

To my pleasure I liked it quite a lot, which makes me think it must really be good. I mean I can set my biases for an author aside, but I still think he was likely having to jump a hurdle and he did so. (Yes he died when my Dad was a child, but you know what I mean)

I have to get cracking using that research here soon so I better sign off for now. See you Sunday.

John,

If you enjoyed The Time Machine you might find Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships of interest. A very well done sequel to the Wells original.

And what is it that Thomas doesn't like about Lucius Shepard, for that matter?

Sheesh, what a grumpfest.

I don't see anything wrong with audiobooks. The main obstacle is that the ones I can easily get are much more expensive than books. Plus, too many of them are abridged, and there aren't many with SF stories, which would certainly tempt me. But I'm in my car for about 90 minutes every day, and a suitable audiobook would go down well.

Alex is right, though - "The Time Machine" is only a novella. You should read it, John!

His rejection of liberal democracy, belief in re-educating the entire planet, operant conditioning of children to make them serve the world-state, mandatory sterilization for defectives, and ultimate support for hunting down reactionaries who oppose "The New World Order." (A term created Wilson, but he's the rare person who wrote a book titled "The New World Order" and actually described it as an effort to create a Socialistic World-State. So he's also a source for a lot of paranoid lunatic conspiracy theories) He created the term "liberal fascist" to describe himself and he's probably the only person it ever actually made sense. His idea was that after being properly re-educated to rejection nationalism, excessive individualism, and irrational dogmas humanity would be able to manage liberty. He opposed repression in the name of any individual state, but supported suppression by the elite at the beginning of "The World State."

Even if some of this is exaggerated, and I'm pretty sure it's not as I have sources, he definitely and clearly said he opposed universal suffrage. He believed that most people were still too unintelligent and irrational to be trusted with such a thing as voting so instead he favored rule by an elite at least for the short-term. He also clearly sent vicious foul-mouthed letters to people like Orwell for criticizing his work. That fact is documented. He alienated many of his admirers and threatened lawsuits on societies created in honor of his ideals. And yes he also once advocated bombing the Vatican out of existence, but that's just one part. He was kicked out of the Fabians, who in comparison were fairly reasonable, for being too revolutionary and non-democratic in outlook. I intended to leave for a bit though, so don't get me started

Anyway despite all that he had an amazing imagination and was able to couple that to a real intellectual curiosity about science. He was brilliant and horrible, and maybe wonderful to in a way, all at once.
edited by Thomas R on 11/5/2009

John, if you want to explore Wells' fiction I HIGHLY recommend investing in a copy of his SEVEN SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS, which is merely the best single-author SF collection ever put together. In addition to THE TIME MACHINE, it has THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, THE INVISIBLE MAN, THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, THE FOOD OF THE GODS, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS and IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET. The last one can be skipped IMO; the others are the founding novels of modern science fiction. They are all short - and fascinating. You're seeing a genre created before your eyes by a master storyteller.

John, if you want to explore Wells' fiction I HIGHLY recommend investing in a copy of his SEVEN SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS, which is merely the best single-author SF collection ever put together. In addition to THE TIME MACHINE, it has THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, THE INVISIBLE MAN, THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, THE FOOD OF THE GODS, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS and IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET. The last one can be skipped IMO; the others are the founding novels of modern science fiction. They are all short - and fascinating. You're seeing a genre created before your eyes by a master storyteller.

...
The one drawback: American reader Scott Brick's execrable fake British accent. Almost gave up after the first few minutes. Like a bad joke.