Craig Sprowl

April 23, 2002

TIME-TRAVEL JOURNAL

Introduction:

            Within the Science Fiction genre is the sub-genre of Time-Travel.  Time-travel can include anything that involves the travel back or forward in time.  The category encompasses a very large and diverse field.  H.G. Wells’s, The Time Machine, is considered to be the classic novel in the genre.  The narrative of time-travel can be seen in the early science fiction pulps on down to modern science fiction where it continues to be used today.  The notion of time-travel calls for some kind of scientific explanation for the method of travel, even though some early writers decided to skip the method of travel altogether.  The purpose of my journal is to try an explain some of the science behind the idea of time-travel.  I hope to clarify or identify some of the concepts and terms used in the language of time-travel.  Another area I want to investigate is scholarly criticism applied to the time-travel genre.  I think that H.G. Wells is critical to the genre of time-travel, and I would like to understand how this work came to be known as a classic, or some further insight into the author. 

            In the background section of the journal, I will first give a general overview of time-travel, finding the earliest examples of time-travel that I can find.  Included in the background will be an effort to try to explain some of the scientific ideas behind time-travel.  I will also define some key terms, or ideas, in time-travel.  The next section in the journal deals with scholarly critiques on time-travel.  The first journal article is Martin T. Willis’s, Edison as Time Traveler: H.G. Wells’s Inspiration for his First Scientific Character.  The second article is Elena Del Rio’s, The Remaking of La Jetée’s Time-Travel Narrative: Twelve Monkeys and the Rhetoric of Absolute Visibility.  The third article is Veronica Hollinger’s, Deconstructing the Time Machine.  Following the journal articles is a review of the website: www.time-travel.com.  The website review intends to show the sites relevance to the genre of time-travel.  The last section of my journal contains an in depth review of the 1960 film, The Time Machine, starring Rod Taylor. 

 

Background: An Introduction to the Time-Travel Genre  

            Paul J. Nahin locates the beginnings of “nonfictional speculations” in regard to time-travel with Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories, a pulp magazine started in 1926 (Nahin 16).  Gernsback reprinted The Time Machine, for his magazine.  Henry James was so moved by Wells novella, that he wrote a glowing letter to the magazine.  Henry James even addressed a supernatural form of time-travel in his play, Berkeley Square (1929), which would become the first Henry James work to be made into a film.  The film was also named Berkeley Square, and was made by director Frank Lloyd in 1933.  The main character has the ability to be transported back in time by exchanging places with the person in a portrait painting (Frischkorn 1-2).  Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court was published in 1889.  The protagonist was able to travel back in time due to a blow to the head (Cooperson 171).  Edgar Allen Poe’s, A Tale of Ragged Mountains hints at the idea of time-travel.  Augustus Bedloe gets mysteriously transported back and forth while taking a walk in the mountains.  Poe’s short story, however, does not include any kind of transportation machine; his transportations are supernatural.  H.G. Wells, The Time Machine, the official version being published in 1895, stands as the original masterpiece for the time-travel genre. 

            Time-travel narratives include their own special vocabulary.  Unless one is bumped in the head, or has some supernatural explanation for traversing time, one needs some remotely reasonable (scientific) explanation to realize the goal of transportation.  In Paul J. Nahin’s book, Time Travel: A Writer’s Guide to the Real Science of Plausible Time Travel, he examines at length various mechanisms that might transport a science fiction traveler through time.  Nahin is an engineer, and scientific writer who took up the complex job of trying to relate the most obscure mathematical theories regarding space, and try to make it understandable to the prospective time-travel, science fiction writers.  However, the density of the concepts and equations is a serious barrier to overcome.  Einstein’s theory of relativity is the modern plausible explanation that makes the notion of time-travel remotely possible.  Of course, contained in the very notion of time-travel, exist paradoxes inherent to the narrative, which seem to contradict the possibility.  But Einstein showed through his theory that the faster one travels in space, the slower they age. 

            Minkowski, a former math teacher of Einstein, expounded upon Einstein’s theory.  Minkowski determined that there could be a “geometrical interpretation of space-time” (Nahin 52).  This scientific theory can be interpreted with the vocabulary of “world-lines, light cones and closed timelike curves” (Nahin 52).  Life-Line (1939), by Robert Heinlein involves a device that can send a signal and locate times “birth and death points” (Nahin 53).  This knowledge creates the basis for Heinlein’s story.  Einstein’s friend and fellow mathematician, Gödel hypothesized a time line into the future which would eventually close back on itself, because of the fact that space is curved.  Following this theory, if one reached the end of the line, one would start to go backwards in time. 

            Another important term in time-travel is the notion of Hyperspace.  We exist in a three dimensional world, so the universe must contain at least three dimensions.  Time doesn’t count as a dimension because of its nonspatial characteristic.  Scientists speculated; why are there necessarily only three dimensions?  But in regard to the universe, space-time appears to characterize of fourth dimension.  Because this idea cannot be disproved, the term hyperspace was invented to identify a fifth dimension.  Nahin writes, “In the remarkable sophisticated early pulp story by Miles J. Breuer, ‘The Gostak and the Doshes,’ originally published in a 1930 issue of Amazing Stories, an eccentric scientist exclaims…where space unrolls along a fourth dimension on a surface distended from a fifth” (Nahin 69).  Nahin tries to explain dimensions with the example of a sphere.  If the surface of the sphere stood for the known dimensions, then the inner part of the sphere would represent the fifth dimension of hyperspace.  Once hyperspace is created two new ways to traverse hyperspace are created.  The idea of wormholes refers to the idea of someone traveling from points on opposite sides of the sphere by going through the interior of the sphere.  Folded space is yet another term, which belongs to the hyperspace classification.  Nahin illustrates the analogy be drawing two points on a piece of paper, and then folding the paper like a map.  When the paper is folded, the distance between A and B could be of a shorter distance.

            The science behind time-travel can be daunting.  The time-travel genre includes a broad range of author in various categories.  From the original pulp writers, to the modern science fiction writer, the category includes serious works as well as fantasy based novels and stories.  There seems to be a lack of decent books that focus a literary perspective on time-travel fiction.  The most common books dealing with time-travel, approach the subject from a scientific perspective.  These books, such as Pickover’s Time: A Traveler’s Guide, Michio Kaku’s Hyperspace, and even Paul Nahin’s Time Machines are meant for the reader who has a good grasp of science, and mathematics.  These books are replete with mathematical equations to make one’s head spin.  So it is hard to find a middle ground, either one reads a time-travel novel, or one reads the science, and theory behind time-travel.  I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge a fair amount of quality Science Fiction journals, which devote a little attention to the subject of time-travel in science fiction.  The scholarship to be found in the science fiction journals seems to rival that of other literary journals.

 

Bibliography for An Introduction to the Time-Travel Genre:

Cooperson, Michael.  “Remembering the Future: Arabic Time-Travel Literature.”  Edebiyat.  8 (1998): 171-89.

Frischkorn, Craig.  “Frank Lloyd’s Berkeley Square (1993): Re-adapting Henry James’s The Sense of the Past.”  Literature/Film Quarterly.  28.1 (2000): 7-11.

Nahin, Paul.  Time Travel: A Writer’s Guide to the Real Science of Plausible Time Travel. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1997.

Poe, Edgar Allen.  Collected Works of Edgar Allen Poe, Volume 3.  Ed. Thomas Mabbott, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978.

 

Journal Articles:

Willis, Martin T.  “Edison as Time Traveler: H.G. Well’s Inspiration for his First Scientific Character.”  Science Fiction Studies.  26 (1999): 284-94.

            Martin Willis is concerned with finding a source for H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine.  Appropriately, Willis delineates three major critiques that attempt to locate the inspiration behind The Time Machine.  The first group of critiques sees “the Time Traveler as a poor example of the late Victorian scientist” (Willis 284).  The Time Traveler is viewed as a “Trickster figure.”  Willis holds that this is the most widely held view among critics.  The second group represented by critic Bernard Bergonzi, holds that the Time Traveler is “a late – Victorian scientist with a keen interest in technology” (Willis 284).  In this view the Time Traveler is viewed in terms of his refinement.  This view shows the scientist as human.  The third group of critics is concerned with finding a mythic or some other model to explain the Time Traveler’s “complex character” (Willis 284).  In this interpretation the Time Traveler may be associated with Wells himself, or even Oedipus.  The Time Traveler “exhibits at least three characteristics of the primordial heroic figure” (Willis 285).

            Willis delves into the background for The Time Machine.  The community largely agrees that The Time Machine is evolved from an earlier H.G. Wells short story called The Chronic Argonauts.  The hero of the short story is Dr. Nebogipfel.  There is a consensus that this earlier work was a poor effort.  Despite the poor earlier version of The Time Machine (which Willis does not dispute), Willis contends that upon close examination of The Chronic Argonauts, and following the changes which culminated in The Time Machine, one can find a single source and inspiration behind the texts.  Willis claims that single source is none other than Thomas Edison. 

            Willis proceeds to give numerous examples to prove his argument.  First, Willis explains how Wells was quite aware of Edison, his life, and his inventions.  Wells developed his classic during the years 1888 to 1895, which coincides perfectly with Edison’s peak, from 1880 to 1890.  However, Willis maintains that public opinion held a dual image of Edison.  In one sense he typified the “ultimate Victorian hero” (Willis 287).  On the other hand, the community of Menlo Park, viewed Edison with fear and suspicion, giving him the nickname, “the Wizard of Menlo Park” (Willis 287).  Willis suggests that because of a similar attitude expressed at the time in England, Wells would have known about this dual image. 

            Willis proceeds with drawing comparisons between Wells unnamed narrator, called the Time Traveler, and Thomas Edison.  The first comparison shows Dr. Nebogipfel, from the earliest version, occupying a house in an old Welsh village, and arousing suspicion among the residents.  This relates to Edison provoking a similar reaction upon moving his laboratory to Menlo Park.  Another point of comparison shows that as Edison lighted Menlo Park with his invention of electric light, so did Dr. Nebogipfel.  Later, Wells retreated, and does not include it in The Time Machine, probably to give his story more credibility and a sense of the familiar.  A peculiar connection between The Time Traveler and Edison shows up in early newspaper editions of the story.  Visitors to the laboratory are given the names, “Blank, Dash, and Chose” (Willis 289).  Edison’s first two children are given the nicknames “Dot” and “Dash,” named after telegraphy.  Another naming similarity surfaces with the Eloi woman whose name is Weena, compared with Edison’s wife, named Mina. 

            The similarities continue; Edison has a private workshop located in his home, when he moved to West Orange, while the Time Traveler’s laboratory is also located in his house in suburban London.  Both Edison and the Time Traveler are concerned more with practical applications, or inventions, rather than scientific speculation and theory.  Willis insists that both exhibit a trial and error approach to their problems.  Willis even goes as far to say that Wells borrowed Edison’s character traits for his hero.  Edison was well known for his relentlessness with regard to solving problems, often going for long periods of time with minimal sleep.  Willis points out that the Time Traveler “accomplished the task after 60 hours of continuous labour” (Willis 291).  Willis concludes by noting,

“In their roles as scientist and inventor, both Thomas Edison and fully fledged Time Traveler of the 1895 romance reveal marked similarities in technique, working practice, and personality.  No longer should Wells’s Time Traveler be seen as the cool scientific thinker, or a mythical hero in the epic mold, or an ordinary Victorian who is out of his depth in the world of the Eloi and Morlock” (Willis 292).

            Willis’s article is thorough and well crafted.  He clearly presents his argument, and his evidence to support it.  Willis article is so cogent; it is hard to not agree with him.  This article was very useful in gaining some insight into the authorial intention of the most well known Time-Travel novel ever written.  It is also refreshing to believe that Wells would base his narrator on such a substantial figure, which gives the novel even more weight and substance.

 

 

Del Rio, Elena.  “The Remaking of La Jetée’s Time-Travel Narrative: Twelve Monkeys and the Rhetoric of Absolute Visibility.”  Science Fiction Studies.  28 (2001): 383-98.

            Del Rio’s critique conducts a methodical comparison between the two Science Fiction films, the American Twelve Monkeys (1995), and the French La Jetée.  The American film, Twelve Monkeys was directed by Terry Gilliam.  The French film, La Jetée (1962) was made by the Swiss filmmaker Chris Marker.  The connection between the two films lies in Gilliam’s claim that his film was inspired by the French film.  Del Rio confirms that the plots in both of the films are quite similar.  On the surface the films are quite dissimilar.  Twelve Monkeys is filmed in color, and runs over two hours.  La Jetée is a 27 minute, black and white film, marked by the unusual feature of having no continuous motion; all of the images in the film are stills that are flashed on the screen. 

The plot of La Jetée:

“La Jetée’s narrative is set in the aftermath of WW III, when a handful of survivors have taken shelter underground from the deadly effects of radio-activity.  A group of scientists performs experiments on those subjects who are naturally inclined to remember strong images from the past.  The aim of these experiments is to perfect the scientific and psychological mechanisms of time travel into the past so as to be able to apply the same principles to time travel in the future.  By traveling into the future, the scientists intend to acquire the knowledge and the technology necessary to change the dismal prospects of civilization in the present.  As he travels into the past, the subject chosen for the experiment becomes involved with a woman and eventually refuses the offer to inhabit the world in the future.  In the film’s concluding scene, the man is shot by someone from the underground camp as he and the woman meet at the airport.  The closing scene fulfills the half premonition/half memory featured in the opening scene, where a child – presumably the time traveler himself – unwittingly witnesses a man’s death – his own – on the airport jetty” (Del Rio 383).

 

            Twelve Monkeys has a very similar plot to La Jetée.  Instead of summarizing Twelve Monkeys plot I will just point out the differences.  While La Jetée is set after World War III, Twelve Monkeys is set after a virus has been released causing a desolation on the Earth.  Gilliam’s film includes the scientific community in the future, but unlike La Jetée, they are linked to another scientific community in the past.  In the American film, the main character, Cole, develops a romantic relationship with a psychiatrist from the past.  Unlike La Jetée, Twelve Monkeys contains an epilogue, which serves to inform the audience that the scientist from the future will be able to prevail. 

            Del Rio’s argument is that despite the two film’s similarities, they couldn’t be more different.  She proceeds to show us exactly what those differences are.  According to Del Rio, she doesn’t intend to judge the two films, but rather show how each film has chosen a different representational system to tell its story.  While the French film is supposed to come across as self-evident, she contends that Twelve Monkeys is cloaked in the polish and mastery of Hollywood cinema, and therefore requires an explanation to the methods behind it (Del Rio 385).  Del Rio quotes William Spanos, who has argued that classic Hollywood cinema operates along the same lines of Western metaphysics, in the sense that Hollywood film “has favored a notion of existence as presence – the production of a stable, fixed picture capable of managing and repressing the differential, destabilizing force of time” (Del Rio 385).  This mainstreaming idea of representation works against the film narration of a time-travel film.  Del Rio asserts that the film La Jetée, with its time lapse style presentation, offers a more convincing feeling of the distortion of time. 

            The genre of Science Fiction films, according to Del Rio, offers the potential of being able to subvert the normal narration found in classic cinema.  A time-travel movie, especially ought to be able to break some of Hollywood’s conventions when it comes to the representation of time, after all, time-travel isn’t supposed to be sequential.  She notes that the American film relies too much on special effects, is too “glossy,” and pushes an unrelenting flow of images at the audience.  The fault with this is that it serves to undermine the film’s very notion of time-travel.  Meanwhile, La Jetée is crafted in black and white, with still images, with blurred images, and sparse backgrounds, which all combine to provoke feelings of altered time, or otherworldliness in its audience.  Therefore, La Jetée’s production has served the narration in a positive way, while Twelve Monkeys images undermine the narration of time-travel.  Another difference in the two films is the way each “represent its mechanisms of surveillance” (Del Rio 390).  The scientists in La Jetée create the impression of surveillance by the sound of a whispering German voiceover.  The scientists in Twelve Monkeys create the effect of surveillance by the appearance of video monitors.

            Del Rio raises another problem with the American film, in respect to the scientific achievement that appears to have been attained by the scientists depicted in the film.  She maintains that according to their video monitors, and other electronic gadgets, sending a person back in time to gather information doesn’t make sense; they already have the answers.  Finally, Del Rio shows that the two films approach the subject of death very differently.  In La Jetée, “death is dwelled on from beginning to end” (Del Rio 394).  In Twelve Monkeys, although Cole does die, his death is mediated through a scene in the epilogue, to show that there was a purpose to his death.  Twelve Monkeys contains the idea of a man on a mission, while the French film is wrapped up in Freud’s castration complex/death, desire and wholeness.  Del Rio concludes her essay by remarking that only an American Science Fiction film could master both death and aliens through science and technology (Del Rio 395).

            Del Rio’s adroit comparison of the two films altered my understanding with regard to the American film, Twelve Monkeys.  Being so used to Hollywood cinema, and its technique, and standard forms of presentation I was not aware of how much the production was streamlined to fit American values.  I have seen Twelve Monkeys, while I have not seen, La Jetée.  When I saw the American film I was intrigued, by the intricate plot, and the odd circular storyline.  I thought that Twelve Monkeys is a movie I could come back to and see again, because there was something there more than just pure entertainment.  After reading Del Rio’s critique I was left thinking that the French movie must give a more accurate feeling of time-travel.  Her article has made me want to see the movie La Jetée.  I would also like to see Twelve Monkeys again, because it is a very appealing movie.  I believe Del Rio’s article is very important to the understanding of what is behind either movie.

 

Hollinger, Veronica.  “Deconstructing the Time Machine.”  Science Fiction Studies.  14 (1987):201-21.

            Deconstructing the Time Machine is steeped in literary criticism as it relates to the time-travel genre within Science Fiction.  Hollinger notes her intent is to examine time-travel in relation to Derrida’s deconstruction.  Hollinger cites Mark Rose, “the visualization of time as a line generated the idea of time travel” (Hollinger 201).  Because we have constructed the reality of a linear notion of time, we can readily see that there is a future, and a past.  Hollinger notes how Science Fiction is involved in the “processes of defamiliarization” because it removes us from our present (Hollinger 203).  The time-travel story takes the process one step further because it is twice removed, not only from our present context, but from other contexts as well. 

            Hollinger turns her attention to the “Grandfather Paradox.”  The Grandfather Paradox, in a nutshell, questions the possibility of one traveling back in time, killing their Grandfather before he had met your Grandmother, and thereby eliminating yourself from existence.  Time-travel makes it possible for the effect to come before the cause.  This paradox has yet to be solved.  With this paradox inherent to the time-travel genre, all time-travel narratives contain the threat of destruction within itself.  Hollinger discusses a variation of the time-travel genre called the “time-loop” story.  The example she gives is Robert Heinlein’s All You Zombies (1959), in which the protagonist ‘through time travel and sex change, he is his own mother and father; trapped in a process of endless supplementation, he must repeatedly travel into the past to (re)create himself” (Hollinger 204).  The time-loop narrative still contains the same Grandfather paradox inherent in the normal time-travel story. 

            According to Hollinger, we can define two predominate scientific discourses.  The first is Newton’s discourse in which time is “linear, homogeneous, and consecutive” (Hollinger 205).  The other scientific discourse is Einstein’s theory of relativity.  The theory of relativity ultimately becomes aligned with the theory of deconstruction, because things become defined by their difference, and are always relative to any other thing.  So the sign does not have a fixed meaning.  Hollinger serves up Wells, The Time Machine, as the ultimate example of a time-travel narrative constructed under the fixed and stable paradigm of Newtonian physics.  On the other hand, Jorge Luis Borges in The Garden of Forking Paths, relates a world/time not in a linear sense, but in a web, “an ever spreading network of diverging, converging parallel times” (Hollinger 209).  The difference between the two paradigms can also be seen by comparing The Time Machine, with its Newtonian extrapolation of the present, to Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) where two different futures compete for the present, typifying a relative aspect to time. 

            Although Wells’s, The Time Machine, was written within a Newtonian discourse it does achieve some remarkable effects.  Wells created a time machine, that in turn, creates the time in which the narration takes effect (Hollinger 211).  In a sense Wells’s The Time Machine anticipated Derrida’s notions of the absence of the sign or the referent.  At the end of Wells’s novel it is noted that the Time Traveler has been gone for three years, so does this mean that he was never there, that he has always been absent. 

            Hollinger’s article provides an insight into the time-travel sub-genre of Science Fiction.  It is interesting how the very nature of time-travel, with the possibility of going back in time, has consequences of discourse.  It is remarkable to see how Wells has had such an impact on time-travel novels. 

 

Review of Website: www.time-travel.com

            Time-travel.com certainly chose a good name.  Almost every search engine lists the site as a result.  Upon reaching their home page one sees a wealth of choices.  Under the heading of Time-Travel Guide is a subset of ten possible choices of different areas to enter for more information.  The categories are as follows, Time-Travel Research Center, Time-Travel Research Association, Time, Physics of Time Travel, Experiments in Time, Metaphysics, Visions of Time, Time in Sci-Fi, The Time-Travel Store, and Member Gateway. 

            The website is very well organized and contains a lot of information on the subject of Time-Travel.  An example of the extensive categories of information can be seen when one clicks on the main category of Time in Sci-Fi.  Once one enters, forty more categories are listed that in turn, can be clicked on revealing content described by the headings.  Sample categories under the general category of Time in Sci-Fi; include Science Fiction Paradoxes, Alternate Worlds, Time Travel in Film, Travel to Past, and Travel to Future, to name just some.  But this is where the content gets spotty.  For example, under the Time Travel in film category they only list four films, with a few pictures, and a short summary paragraph about each one.  Considering that the Internet Movie Database website lists some approximate three hundred movies that in some way fall into the genre of time-travel, the film content on the site is rather disappointing. 

            Other categories, however, reveal nicely packaged content with thorough explanations of terminology along with illustrations and pictures.  Under the Organical Nature of Time category, is just such an example, of thorough content.  DNA is explained, and is complimented with definitions, and illustrations.  Another example of well packaged content can be seen under the category, What is Time?

            Among the major ten categories to be found on the home page, one of the categories lead to dubious, pseudo science areas of exploration.  UFO experiments, The Philadelphia Experiment, and other strange notions take center stage in this category.  The only problem with having paranormal type content on the site is that it makes one wonder about the validity of the rest of the content.  But, for some strange reason time-travel and the paranormal, and conspiracy theories do seem to often share the same bed.  But in balance once can find the entire e-text of H.G. Wells, The Time Machine, on the site, as well as a short interview with Carl Sagen. 

            The Time Travel Store is a useful category.  Once you enter the store; books, video, romances, and children’s book are available to click on.  Under the book and video sections, there is not much of a selection.  For example under Science Fiction books, less than fifteen books come up.  The books that are listed do have a picture of the cover, along with a short description.  Clicking on the book or video directly transfers one to Amazon.com, which is a nice feature.  The largest category in the store is Romance books; these are science fiction romance or fantasy books.  Because the Romance category was so large, I couldn’t help but wonder if the site might be intended more for the Romance, and Fantasy type reader.

            Overall I would give the website fairly high marks.  It is clear from their organization that a lot of work has gone into the site.  Time-travel.com would be a good site to visit for someone looking for an introduction to time-travel, but once the surface knowledge is exhausted; there would be little incentive to come back for more. 

 

Film Review:

The Time Machine.  Dir.  George Pal.  Perf.  Rod Taylor, Alan Young, Yvette Mimieux, Sebastian Cabot, and Tom Helmore.  Warner Brothers,  1960.

            The movie, The Time Machine, released in 1960, is based on H.G. Wells’s book of the same name.  The film is 103 minutes long, and is in color.  The movie largely stays true to Wells novel.  Rod Taylor plays George, the main character of the movie.  The character George is the same as the Time Traveler (unnamed) in Wells novel.  Alan Young plays the character David Filby, who serves as George’s closest friend.  Yvette Mimieux plays the character of Weena.  The film is set in the same time period as Wells’s book, 1899, in Victorian London.

            Before the opening scene is shown, various clocks float and twist against a black background, then these images fade in to a picture of Big Ben in London.  I mention this because throughout the film, director George Pal ingeniously reinforces the idea of time.  Pal also employs some clever methods to convey the passage of time.  In the opening scene, the location is George’s house.  Several of George’s friends are gathered in a room waiting for the return of George.  Pal has decorated the inside of George’s home with a multitude of clocks, in all different shapes and sizes, and even includes an hourglass on a table.  Upon close examination this appears to be overdone, as his home resembles a clock-shop, but this is another example of Pal making sure we get the point that this film deals with time. Combined with the visual image of the clocks are the auditory sounds of the clocks.  While George’s friends wait for him, the constant ticking and chiming of clocks can be heard. 

            George eventually stumbles into the room with his shirt torn and dirty.  George then proceeds to tell them his story of his time-travel adventure.  While George is telling the story to his friends, the cameras fade to the beginning of his trip.  Pal’s cinematic effect, takes the viewer on the time-travel journey with George. 

            On New Year’s Eve, 1899 George prepares to leave in his Time Machine.  However, before he goes, he marks a dinner date with his friends for January 5, 1900.  George plans to be gone for five days.  Once George is seated in the Time Machine, his time-travel journey begins.  Again, what I found to be interesting was the technique Pal employed to convey the appearance of the passage of time.  When George presses the lever forward, the camera switches to a lighted candle positioned next to a clock.  As we watch the clock dial rotate counterclockwise, we also notice the candle rapidly burn down to the base.  Above the Time Machine, where George sits, there is a skylight in the laboratory.  The camera pans to a view looking outside the skylight to see the sun arc across the sky in rapid fashion.  The clouds and moon also race across as George moves further into time.  I believe that Pal chose to represent the passage of time in this way because it is a symbol of time we are all familiar with.  When George looks out the window, he sees a dress shop across the street with a mannequin in the window.  As George races forward in time, he looks out his window at the dress shop display window to see the fashions change on the mannequin.  George makes a comment that the mannequin like him doesn’t age.  So the mannequin can represent a time-traveler. 

            George stops his machine three times in twentieth century London, before propelling himself way off into the future.  George stops his machine, and gets out in 1917, 1940, and 1966.  In each of these three scenes, England is at war.  In 1966 London is devastated by some kind of nuclear weapon, which George barely escapes from.  Volcanoes erupt in London, due to man’s violence.  The streets of London are filled by lava flows.  George, and his machine become encased in a mountain caused by the volcanoes, and he must travel ahead in time to the year 802701, in order for the mountain to wear down. 

            When George steps out of his machine in 802701, he notes that a thousand years have passed without wars.  He sees that the land is now like a garden, the earth is green, and there are no weeds or briars.  George says that nature is tamed completely, and that he has found paradise.  While walking through the garden, with strange new fruits, George makes the comment, “There would be no paradise if it belonged to me alone.”  From this part of the movie forward, I contend that George can be viewed as Adam from the Genesis story. 

            George is now in the land of the Morlocks and the Eloi.  Gradually George learns the history behind the two groups.  Both groups descend from the remnants of human life after complete desolation caused by war.  The Morlocks chose to live underground as a result of the war.  In the film they have a blue-greenish hairy, monster like appearance, complete with glowing eyes.  The Morlocks are represented as evil, and earn that reputation because they live underground, they are the masters to the slave Eloi, and they are cannibals.  And, the final proof that they are evil lies in their aversion to light.  The opposition to the Morlocks is the Eloi.  The Eloi represent the good, after the devastation, they chose to live above land, they have no aversion to light, they live in a garden (Eden).  And they are innocent; they don’t know about fire, books, and they don’t ask why. 

            George develops a love interest for his new found Weena (an Eve type character).  George becomes obsessed with the idea that he can change the future.  George single-handedly defeats the Morlocks, and liberates the Eloi from their slave status.  He introduces fire to this future culture, and has the idea of introducing knowledge as well, through books.  An additional motivation for George is his love of Weena.  With all of this in mind, George travels back to London, on January 5, 1900, to keep the dinner appointment with his friends.  George explains his time-travel journey to his skeptical friends, says goodbye to his close friend, David Filby, for the last time, and takes three unnamed books from his bookshelf, and takes back off to the future. 

            I believe that the director George Pal deserves a lot of credit for making this film what it is.  H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine stands out as probably the classic of all time-travel novels.  Pal’s movie, The Time Machine, is over forty years old now, but it has stood the test of time like the novel has. 

 

Conclusion

 

            The genre of time-travel covers a broad field of work.  I wasn’t aware at the beginning, how the genre finds its way into most every science fiction style.  It was interesting to learn that some classic authors have dabbled in the notion of time-travel, although it was usually through some non-scientific means.  With some pain, I learned that a quick way to find your intellectual limits is to try and understand the complex mathematical theories of Einstein and his friends with regard to the theoretical possibility of time-travel.  This was the most difficult subject that I dealt with.  I don’t have any kind of science or mathematic background, which I believe is required, in order to grasp the scientific relation to time-travel.  I came to the conclusion that there is a lack of material (books), which deal with examining time-travel fiction.  Under the general category of science fiction, one can find a wealth of material that deals with a broad range of themes and concerns.  When it comes to the very specific genre of time-travel, one finds scientific books that don’t deal much with science fiction, or one finds individual works of science fiction that are about time-travel.  So, I was very pleased to find the journal articles that I did.  The journal articles explored themes and concerns specifically related to the time-travel genre.  That was the most interesting part of the journal for me.  I felt that I learned the most about time-travel through the journal articles.  The more I learned about H.G. Wells, the more I am fascinated with him.  The journal article concerning the relationship between the Time Traveler character in his novel and Edison was intriguing.  Although I had seen the 1960 version of the film, The Time Machine before, writing a review, and analyzing it made me appreciate it even more. 

            If I were to continue this research on time-travel, I would like to explore films that contained a time-travel theme.  I would like to understand more how time-travel is represented in film, and the techniques that make that possible.  The journal article that compared the Twelve Monkeys to the French film La Jetée was interesting.  It would be nice to compare H.G. Wells’s book to the movie.  I was interested in seeing the early time-travel stories written for science fiction pulps.  It would be satisfying to find the origins of time-travel in the early stories.