Subject: Review of Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships

From: [email-masked] (Steven H Silver)
Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 20:46:54 GMT

THE TIME SHIPS
			by Stephen Baxter
		Copyright 1996 Steven H Silver

     A few years ago, the term "Steampunk" began to appear as a means of
denoting science fiction in which the Victorians managed to develop
computers.  By expanding its use, steampunk could be taken to mean any
Victorian tale which included aspects of technology which were not readily
available to the Victorians.  A few years ago, Stephen Baxter wrote his
paean to Jules Verne when he published _Anti-Ice_, in which a Vernesian
character manages to build a spaceship in the late nineteenth century.
     Baxter's new book pays tribute to the other great nineteenth-century SF
author, H.G. Wells.  _The Time Ships_ is a direct sequel to Wells's _The
Time Machine_ (1895).  Before attacking the Baxter work, I decided to
re-read the Wells original.  Upon beginning Baxter's sequel, I discovered
that Baxter had managed to faithfully capture Wells's style.  Moreover,
while usually this type of pastiche fails if carried on too long, Baxter's
prose seems to flow naturally, as if he were writing in the current manner
rather than a style which has been out of date for a century.  While
Baxter's prose is reminiscent of Wells', many of the social ideas which
Baxter espouses would not have sat easily, I suspect, with Wells.
     In order to get around this, Baxter's author is the original time
traveler (who Wells never named).  One of his audience when he related his
earlier adventure was a young journalist, who turns out to be H.G. Wells,
although Baxter refrains from giving his name.  This allows Baxter an
increased versimilitude when the reader sees what "really happened" as
opposed to the slant which the author of the previous work placed on the
time traveler's adventures.
     Wells's book was under one hundred pages.  Baxter's covers nearly six
times that length.  Nevertheless, he manages to maintain the pace of the
original.  Wells' time traveler made a single trip through time, beginning
in 1894, journeying progressively into the future until he reached the end
of the universe returning to 1894 and then leaving on another journey into
the future.
     Baxter takes over at this point, introducing the first anachronism
based on the time traveler's own motions.  The Eloi and Morlocks he
encountered on his first visit do not exist as such when he returns to the
future and he must come to terms with a world in which his expectations were
not met.  As the time traveler continues through time, eventually gaining a
Morlock scientist as a companion, the universe continues to splinter until
the traveler seems completely lost from his own England.
     While Wells's traveler visited the end of the universe, Baxter's
traveler seems intent on seeing the beginning of the universe.  His leaps
through time eventually land him in a prehistoric England in which a time
war is being fought between twentieth-century Germans and British.
     Baxter's work builds admirably on _The Time Machine_ and, while he
doesn't always share the political and social views which suffused Wells's
original, he manages to interject his own ideas without breaking entirely
from the world which Wells created a century ago.

%E  Stephen Baxter
%T  The Time Ships
%I   HarperPrism
%C  New York, NY
%D  January 1995
%G  0-06-105648-0
%O  PB $5.99
%P  520

Steven H Silver
Bibliographies on Jews in SF, Harry Turtledove, SF set in Chicago
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4208/sfbiblio.html
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