The Time Machine - Chapter 1

What I know about The Time Machine

1)It kind of invented the idea of the time machine
2)NOTHING ELSE

I honestly don’t know anything about this novel other than the fact that in the movie the time machine looks like a sleigh with a satellite behind it. I don’t know what the people in this book use the time machine for, if time paradoxes are a thing (I suspect they are not), or how far into the past or future these characters will go. That said, let’s dive in!

Overall: quite a rush for a first chapter

That was a lot of information that just got dumped on us. Like, I’m still a little bit taken aback by the whole thing. We’re presented with a meeting being held by several men at the house of a man simply referred to as “the time traveler”. The Time Traveler is hoping to show them that he has, in fact, built a time machine. There really isn’t much individual characterization given to any of the others except for incredulity. The chapter is narrated in the first-person but I’m not sure who the narrator actually is, at least in terms of profession. The only character that seems to have a name is a person named Fillby. Even so though, what does the time traveler show them?

Well, he first begins to talk about the idea of a fourth dimension being temporal. I’ve heard this iteration of fourth-dimensionality before, it’s a common (typically sci-fi) understanding of it. I wonder if this is where calling the fourth dimension “time” originated. I will say, unless the time traveler changes at some point, I’m surprised by how small scale the machine itself is. He uses it to transport a small model into either the past/future. It’s kind of Primer-esque at this point. We still don’t really have a plot as such yet. One thing that I’m noticing in the sci-fi that I’ve seen so far (Dick’s works, Frankenstein, a few others) is that there’s usually an early chapter that sort of establishes “ground rules”. Usually, this chapter is the second or third in the book-the first typically serving as introduction to the characters. Here, the order seems a bit reversed. We’re introduced to some of the mechanics of the time machine before we really get to know anyone. It’s an interesting structural decision and I wonder if this was one of the first instances of this formula.