The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 3 September 1998
In this DAW publication, the editor declares that Friedell may have been a correspondent with H.G. Wells, author of the science-fiction classic, The Time Machine. The novel opens with the author reproducing letters between him and Wells' secretary, but the overbearing grouchiness of the letters surely belies that possibility. The book sets out to be a faithful sequel to Wells' story of a man travelling into the distant future only to find the horrific outcome of a divided society. Grouchy is the best word to describe this book. The tone of the writing, the unprovoked barbs at English culture and several poets, and the characters themselves, all express a curmudgeonliness not seen in the first book. The story itself is not a very good sequel, dwelling on "scientific" details of the time travel, leaving what the traveller finds almost a footnote. There are fair attempts at describing the world of the future, and the difficulties in travelling into the past, but the whole lacks the cohesiveness of Wells' work. The story fails, not only to be consistent with The Time Machine, but to be consistent with itself. Perhaps the book serves as an oddity in time travel stories, but it isn't a very good book.
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