Friday Radio: The Time Machine (Favorite Story)

Based on the novella by H.G. Wells, originally published in The New Review, 1894-5.

Originally broadcast I know not where, May 28, 1949.

Although it's still having that problem where I can't see a list of the files I've uploaded, I'll go ahead and recommend the free service where I'm hosting the mp3 files: kiwi6.com.

According to Wikipedia, H.G. Wells invented the expression "time machine" in this novel, but was not the first person to write about one. That honor goes to the Spanish author Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau for El anachronópete (1887). Wells himself previously wrote about a machine that travels through time in the short story "The Chronic Argonauts" (1888).

In his 1899 novel When the Sleeper Wakes, Wells wrote again about a 19th century man in the future. But in that novel, the protagonist, Graham, doesn't travel to the future, instead spending more than two centuries in an ageless trance. Wells wrote his dystopian When the Sleeper Wakes in response to Edward Bellamy's utopian 1888 novel Looking Backward: 2000-1887, and so simply borrowed the trance premise from Bellamy.

Yes, here's where I remind you that Thrilling Wonder has an edition of When the Sleeper Wakes, including all fifteen illustrations by H. Lanos from the 1899 first edition. (Read and/or download a preview chapter as a pdf file here.) You can currently get the book from us (thrilling_wonder) on Amazon for only $5.48, plus $3.99 s/h. Own the future today! Look slippy!