The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 3 September 1998
by Egon Friedell
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 suggests that is unlikely. And yet, German philosopher and actor Friedell's complex life suggests some truth to his tale. 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 Wells's book. Perhaps the bitterness is an echo of the author's own trials, problems which led to his suicide while escaping from fascists before World War 2. The story in the book itself is not a very good sequel, dwelling on "scientific" details of the time travel, leaving what the traveler finds almost a footnote. There are fair attempts at describing the world of the future, and the difficulties in traveling into the past, but the whole lacks the cohesiveness of Wells's 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, a footnote to its author's meteoric and tragic existence, its problems a sign of its posthumus publication, but it isn't a very good book.
[Other Science-Fiction Reviews]