The Time Ships

I thought I was really going to struggle with this one, but it grew on me as it went along, and ended up solidly enjoyable.

The Time Ships is the officially-sanctioned sequel to HG Wells' The Time Machine. It's actually the third follow-up I have read, after Christopher Priest's The Space Machine, which was in the end more closely linked to War of the Worlds, and KW Jeter's Morlock Night, which I can't really remember much about. At 630 densely-printed pages it's much much longer than the original, maybe nine or ten times as long, and I don't think it's anything like as significant, although it does manage a good placing in the ISFDB Top 100.

My main worry was that the language would become intolerable over that length. It's written in a style that apes the 19th-century prose of Wells, and it doesn't really flow well in the early chapters. I don't know if the style softens, or if I just got used to it, but it did pick up pace and become more engaging after that initial struggle.

The story itself brings in quantum mechanics, and multiverse theory, and a knowledge of the real "future" since the 1895 original. It's split into digestible sections that more-or-less stand apart as the Time Traveller visits different epochs and time streams.

I think it's a worthy enough sequel, but its impact is lessened because the concept is now such a genre mainstay. I gave it 3.5/5.