Subject: THE TIME SHIPS by Stephen Baxter

From: "Evelyn C Leeper" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 1995 08:03:57 GMT

THE TIME SHIPS by Stephen Baxter
            Voyager, ISBN 0-00-648012-8, 1995, 630pp, L4.99
                   A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		    Copyright 1995 Evelyn C. Leeper

     This is the first authorized sequel to H. G. Wells's TIME MACHINE,
though there have been many unauthorized sequels. (See my Intersection
convention report for a summary of Baxter's talk on these.)

     The problem that British authors have is that if their books are
published in Great Britain before they come out in the United States,
they end up missing out on the Hugo nominations, since the voters are
overwhelmingly North American.  So listen up:

     NOMINATE THIS BOOK.

     (Actually, it used to be the kiss of death for me to recommend a
book for a Hugo, but after I pushed for Michael Bishop's BRITTLE
INNINGS and James Morrow's TOWING JEHOVAH and both made the ballot, I
figure that maybe the voters are coming to realize my wisdom.)

     But back to THE TIME SHIPS.  It begins where THE TIME MACHINE
leaves off, right after the Time Traveller has told his story to his
friends.  They are skeptical, and he is feeling guilty about abandoning
Weena to the fire and the Morlocks, so he packs a bag, hops into his
time machine and heads back to 802,701 to rescue Weena, help the Eloi,
and get proof of his travels.

     But things don't go as planned.

     I don't want to reveal too much.  One of joys I had in reading
this book was that, because it hadn't been released in the United
States, I hadn't read much information about it.  (I must have read
enough in LOCUS to know I wanted to get it, but not much more than
that.)  But I can say that Baxter does a good job of writing in the
style of Wells.  After all, his story is still being told in the first
person, by the Time Traveller, and so needs to retain the Victorian
language that Wells used.  Baxter does this, leavening it just a bit to
avoid sounding obviously archaic.  The result is something that readers
familiar with Wells can "flow" into, but newer readers won't see as
strange-sounding.

     Baxter said at Intersection that there were some things Wells
didn't do that he (Baxter) wanted to, and he does that here. Other
speakers at Intersection--held this 100th anniversary of the original
novel--point out that Wells ignored time paradoxes, and Baxter takes a
stab at some of those, as well as introduced some ideas about time
travel formulated since Wells's time.  Yet he doesn't do this in a
"pasted-on" fashion, and it works.  The reader might even start to
think that Baxter is trying to cover too much and too wide a range, and
certainly there have been authors who attempted similar and failed, but
Baxter ties it all together so well that in the end he cannot be
faulted in this regard.

     One minor complaint I had was the use of post-Wells historical
figures (which at times *did* seem awkward).  But Baxter's use was not,
on the whole, gratuitous, and my objection may be just a side-effect of
my seeing this done so often in alternate histories.

     I have studiously avoided telling you more than the bare minimum
of the plot so that you can discover the story as it unfolds.  Go read
this book.

     (HarperPrism will be publishing this book in January 1996, which
means it will probably be in the stores in December 1995.  This is good
news for United States fans, and also for Baxter, who may get the Hugo
nomination he deserves.)

%T      The Time Ships
%A      Stephen Baxter
%C      London
%D      1995
%I      HarperCollins Voyager
%O      paperback, L4.99
%G      ISBN 0-00-648012-8
%P      630pp
%S      Time Machine
%V      2

-- 
Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | [email-masked]
A good world needs knowledge, kindliness and courage; it does not need a
regretful hankering after the past, or a fettering of the free intelligence
by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.  -- Bertrand Russell