Chapter 6 - The Heat Ray in the Chobham Road
You know how in some internet videos of an event happening, they re-play the content of the video in slow motion? That’s basically this chapter.
I know it’s still pretty early but I’m feeling kinda mixed about this book so far. There’s a chance that it’ll have a really cool ending the way The Time Machine did, or that its narrative will change, but as is the strange nature of this narration and the relatively detached voice with which these events are regarded seems to work to the detriment of the piece. Say what you will about The Time Machine, at least I could kind of tell the personality of The Time Traveler by his interactions with his guests and the Eloi. This narrator though (I’m gonna just start calling them Hershel for now) seems not only detached, but strangely like Wells wanted to do a third-person omniscient role or third-person limited focused on a specific character but didn’t. As is, the first person narration makes these strange moments where Hershel is able to tell how other people perceived a particular event as it unfolds strikes me as really strange.
We get some details on the heat-ray in this chapter. It can melt through things, it is invisible, and it killed around 40 people on the night of the initial attack. Other than that, however, this chapter is spent with the narrator mentioning the people in the nearby towns did not know what was going on at the time. I suppose there’s something to be said for the relative lack of communication between the places, but it seems that any point that could be made about it is fairly beside the focus of the narrative. I feel like maybe I’m missing something to these chapters, could anyone fill me in on why these are presented here?
Showing posts with label 1800's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1800's. Show all posts
Sunday, December 18, 2016
The War of the Worlds - Chapters 4 and 5
Chapter 4: The Cylinder Opens and Chapter 5: The Heat-Ray
Well dang, that’s quite the description
Not much more than the description, but I like the way that the crowd immediately seems to have their preconceptions shattered by the arrival of martians which are not remotely human. Instead, the martians are… well, alien. Their descriptions defy easy categorization and I think that’s a good choice by Wells in describing that these beings are not anything like what th people here suppose they are like. Instead of greeting the Martians as they emerge from the cylinder, the people retreat to a safe distance out of fear.
It’s a pretty solid description though. They’re tentacular and “fungoid” in appearance. They seem to make some kind of noise, but in general they’re monstrous enough that running away is a perfectly believable response. One man falls into the pit with the Martians.
I feel like shit’s about to really hit the fan.
-----------------
Well there you go.
I think it’s hard to write a book like this in some fashion, and I’m wondering where the story is going to take us.
In a way this is rather similar to the Morlocks in The Time Machine. A nameless narrator is giving us an account of his encounter with some strange creatures that are staged as faceless/interchangeable bad guys. I’m reminded in some ways of World War Z and I wonder if the book will kind of go along that route, chronicling the initial days of societal collapse as the Martians go. I honestly think that too much attention on the Martians would probably be detrimental to the story, as they are basically just a force of nature without any seeming character.
That said, they are a horrifying force. When one of the Martians re-emerges from the pit in the evening, now in its more widely known tripodal form, it shoots out a heat wave, seemingly without provocation, and scorches a number of people and the land surrounding the pit in a single swipe. Our narrator is left horrified and turns tail, crying as he runs. A pretty understandable response, but I wonder if there are ways around this heat weapon. It passed over the narrator as he was hidden by some heather, so it would stand to reason that cover does help somewhat. Could heavier material fare better against the Martians?
Well dang, that’s quite the description
Not much more than the description, but I like the way that the crowd immediately seems to have their preconceptions shattered by the arrival of martians which are not remotely human. Instead, the martians are… well, alien. Their descriptions defy easy categorization and I think that’s a good choice by Wells in describing that these beings are not anything like what th people here suppose they are like. Instead of greeting the Martians as they emerge from the cylinder, the people retreat to a safe distance out of fear.
It’s a pretty solid description though. They’re tentacular and “fungoid” in appearance. They seem to make some kind of noise, but in general they’re monstrous enough that running away is a perfectly believable response. One man falls into the pit with the Martians.
I feel like shit’s about to really hit the fan.
-----------------
Well there you go.
I think it’s hard to write a book like this in some fashion, and I’m wondering where the story is going to take us.
In a way this is rather similar to the Morlocks in The Time Machine. A nameless narrator is giving us an account of his encounter with some strange creatures that are staged as faceless/interchangeable bad guys. I’m reminded in some ways of World War Z and I wonder if the book will kind of go along that route, chronicling the initial days of societal collapse as the Martians go. I honestly think that too much attention on the Martians would probably be detrimental to the story, as they are basically just a force of nature without any seeming character.
That said, they are a horrifying force. When one of the Martians re-emerges from the pit in the evening, now in its more widely known tripodal form, it shoots out a heat wave, seemingly without provocation, and scorches a number of people and the land surrounding the pit in a single swipe. Our narrator is left horrified and turns tail, crying as he runs. A pretty understandable response, but I wonder if there are ways around this heat weapon. It passed over the narrator as he was hidden by some heather, so it would stand to reason that cover does help somewhat. Could heavier material fare better against the Martians?
The War of the Worlds - Chapter 3
Chapter 3: On Horsell Common
Overall: Some setup
I think there’s a bit of an interesting task in reading works that are so far removed from our present day. There’s certainly an amount of recontextualization that needs to occur in any attempt to read that text, and it’s interesting to me how perhaps some of our more modern (even relatively speaking) notions of proper chapter structure are really pretty fluid when placed against the breadth of literary history.
This is a set-up chapter. That is to say, not much “happens” in it. Our narrator arrives on Horsell Common where the cylinder has become something of a tourist attraction, and the narrator observes some of the goings-on surrounding this cylinder. From initial fascination, to attempts made to cordon it away from spectators for the time being.
I noticed this in Frankenstein as well, that there were some chapters which more deliberately felt like setup before a major event in the plot than others. While Wells is certainly even more about setup here than Shelley was, I think the structure may have just been a part of literature at the time, and that’s something I find more interesting than any specific thing that occurs in this chapter. I wonder if literature has changed over the years, and if so, how it has done so in structure as well as content. Wells’s stuff tends to feel more “cinematic” than Shelley’s, but even so these quiet moments begin to feel so much like setup that it’s hard to do chapter-by-chapter reviews of them. Thematically it is interesting to wonder how “hard” of science fiction this is, I suppose. Like, would this have been the procedure if a Martian cylinder landed in England in the 1890s? Call the lord who represents the region to come in from London and check it out, and generally wait for their word on what to do?
Ah well, some scattered thoughts. Next chapter is called “The Cylinder Opens” so I imagine it’ll be more to write about.
Overall: Some setup
I think there’s a bit of an interesting task in reading works that are so far removed from our present day. There’s certainly an amount of recontextualization that needs to occur in any attempt to read that text, and it’s interesting to me how perhaps some of our more modern (even relatively speaking) notions of proper chapter structure are really pretty fluid when placed against the breadth of literary history.
This is a set-up chapter. That is to say, not much “happens” in it. Our narrator arrives on Horsell Common where the cylinder has become something of a tourist attraction, and the narrator observes some of the goings-on surrounding this cylinder. From initial fascination, to attempts made to cordon it away from spectators for the time being.
I noticed this in Frankenstein as well, that there were some chapters which more deliberately felt like setup before a major event in the plot than others. While Wells is certainly even more about setup here than Shelley was, I think the structure may have just been a part of literature at the time, and that’s something I find more interesting than any specific thing that occurs in this chapter. I wonder if literature has changed over the years, and if so, how it has done so in structure as well as content. Wells’s stuff tends to feel more “cinematic” than Shelley’s, but even so these quiet moments begin to feel so much like setup that it’s hard to do chapter-by-chapter reviews of them. Thematically it is interesting to wonder how “hard” of science fiction this is, I suppose. Like, would this have been the procedure if a Martian cylinder landed in England in the 1890s? Call the lord who represents the region to come in from London and check it out, and generally wait for their word on what to do?
Ah well, some scattered thoughts. Next chapter is called “The Cylinder Opens” so I imagine it’ll be more to write about.
The War of the Worlds - Chapter 2
Chapter 2 – The Falling Star
Overall: Oh this is cool. Also, some notes on style.
TW: for discussion of imperialistic themes (probably going to be a recurring trend in this book)
Our narrator is in an interesting scenario here. Like in The Time Machine, he begins to narrate someone else’s story. But given what I know of how this story is to proceed, I wonder if some of this is embellishment post-invasion or if it’s all true. After the night of the lights on mars, a strange object is seen falling to Earth. The narrator does not see it, but describes a friend of his, Ogilvy, who does.
The narrative then shifts to Ogilvy as he searches a part of the English countryside to find the object that fell. Eventually, he manages to come across it and can’t make head nor tails of the strange cylinder. However, he manages to enlist the help of nearby townsfolk in trying to excavate the object, as it’s apparent to him that there are living things inside.
I like how fast this is building up in the story. The newspaper has already reported on the strange object and our narrator ends the chapter heading to the sand pits near Ottershaw to try to see it.
So from what all I know of this book, and its adaptations in particular, I’m wondering if an adaptation more true to Wells’s time has been made. By which I mean, it’s one thing to see giant mechanical aliens tromping around a modern city while Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning interact amidst all the comforts of the modern world. However, the contrast between this turn of the 20th century England and the martians, I think, is meant to comment on England’s perception of itself in colonialism. A particularly harrowing example of what I mean can be found in this rhyme that was used by the British during their colonial fights against various peoples in Africa.
“No matter what happens we have got
The maxim gun and they have not”
I think that’s what Wells is probably trying to highlight with what’ll probably be a huge disparity of tech between the Martians and humans. I know that the aliens take over-ish but I don’t know how this book ends, but if it ends with a triumph for the humans, I think it makes a lot of difference if the gap in power is that much wider.
Overall: Oh this is cool. Also, some notes on style.
TW: for discussion of imperialistic themes (probably going to be a recurring trend in this book)
Our narrator is in an interesting scenario here. Like in The Time Machine, he begins to narrate someone else’s story. But given what I know of how this story is to proceed, I wonder if some of this is embellishment post-invasion or if it’s all true. After the night of the lights on mars, a strange object is seen falling to Earth. The narrator does not see it, but describes a friend of his, Ogilvy, who does.
The narrative then shifts to Ogilvy as he searches a part of the English countryside to find the object that fell. Eventually, he manages to come across it and can’t make head nor tails of the strange cylinder. However, he manages to enlist the help of nearby townsfolk in trying to excavate the object, as it’s apparent to him that there are living things inside.
I like how fast this is building up in the story. The newspaper has already reported on the strange object and our narrator ends the chapter heading to the sand pits near Ottershaw to try to see it.
So from what all I know of this book, and its adaptations in particular, I’m wondering if an adaptation more true to Wells’s time has been made. By which I mean, it’s one thing to see giant mechanical aliens tromping around a modern city while Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning interact amidst all the comforts of the modern world. However, the contrast between this turn of the 20th century England and the martians, I think, is meant to comment on England’s perception of itself in colonialism. A particularly harrowing example of what I mean can be found in this rhyme that was used by the British during their colonial fights against various peoples in Africa.
“No matter what happens we have got
The maxim gun and they have not”
I think that’s what Wells is probably trying to highlight with what’ll probably be a huge disparity of tech between the Martians and humans. I know that the aliens take over-ish but I don’t know how this book ends, but if it ends with a triumph for the humans, I think it makes a lot of difference if the gap in power is that much wider.
The War of the Worlds - Chapter 1
Chapter 1: The Eve of War
So here’s what I know about the War of the Worlds going in,
1)ALIEN INVASION!!!!!
2)The aliens are martians with heat waves
3)Orson Welles freaked some folks out on the radio
4)There was a Tom Cruise movie with Dakota Fanning that I didn’t see
Overall: Hey there imperialism metaphors, I see you.
We begin our book with a narration stating that, from what I can gather, the invasion has already happened. Most of the story will instead be a flashback to when it was first occurring. HG Wells is fond of the first-person retrospective narration, I’m noticing. Here we begin with a litany of details about the planet Mars that are somewhat fascinating to consider. How the idea was apparently somewhat prominent (although I don’t know how true to life this is) that Mars may’ve had people on it who “would welcome a missionary enterprise”. Yeah, just from what little I know of this book, and the fact that I know Wells was a fan of social commentary, I can see the critique/commentary on British imperialism already beginning to show through.
While we don’t know when exactly the story is being narrated from, we know that the events described evidently takes place in the early twentieth century. Mars has been under observation from Earth for some time, and over the past few days, strange gas eruptions have been showing up on the planet’s surface. Immediately, the narrator (as yet, unnamed) begins to muse on how the popular conceptions of Martians as being primitive were turning out to be wholly reversed. Here, he launches into a critique of people “judging the Martians harshly” reasoning that humans have been fairly awful to animals, and Europeans to people of “primitive” cultures. Calling for people to not judge the Martians too harshly for their thinking of humans as lesser in turn.
This story, as I mentioned, seems to be largely told as flashback, with the narrator mostly spending this chapter talking about the final days before the Martians invaded Earth. It seems largely here to set up a “what we lost” kind of scene, in order to establish contrast. That said, if that’s the case I’m not sure that Wells does that very effectively. There are occasional mentions to how peaceful it was in those days, but they are largely not the focus of this chapter. Instead, the focus is largely on the disturbances being observed from Earth. Not even really the people’s reactions to these distrubances, just the anomalies themselves. It’s rather dry in that way I suppose. Either way, the narrator makes it clear immediately that Mars is sending ships that will arrive soon, and that, judging from his reminiscences, it isn’t going to go well.
So here’s what I know about the War of the Worlds going in,
1)ALIEN INVASION!!!!!
2)The aliens are martians with heat waves
3)Orson Welles freaked some folks out on the radio
4)There was a Tom Cruise movie with Dakota Fanning that I didn’t see
Overall: Hey there imperialism metaphors, I see you.
We begin our book with a narration stating that, from what I can gather, the invasion has already happened. Most of the story will instead be a flashback to when it was first occurring. HG Wells is fond of the first-person retrospective narration, I’m noticing. Here we begin with a litany of details about the planet Mars that are somewhat fascinating to consider. How the idea was apparently somewhat prominent (although I don’t know how true to life this is) that Mars may’ve had people on it who “would welcome a missionary enterprise”. Yeah, just from what little I know of this book, and the fact that I know Wells was a fan of social commentary, I can see the critique/commentary on British imperialism already beginning to show through.
While we don’t know when exactly the story is being narrated from, we know that the events described evidently takes place in the early twentieth century. Mars has been under observation from Earth for some time, and over the past few days, strange gas eruptions have been showing up on the planet’s surface. Immediately, the narrator (as yet, unnamed) begins to muse on how the popular conceptions of Martians as being primitive were turning out to be wholly reversed. Here, he launches into a critique of people “judging the Martians harshly” reasoning that humans have been fairly awful to animals, and Europeans to people of “primitive” cultures. Calling for people to not judge the Martians too harshly for their thinking of humans as lesser in turn.
This story, as I mentioned, seems to be largely told as flashback, with the narrator mostly spending this chapter talking about the final days before the Martians invaded Earth. It seems largely here to set up a “what we lost” kind of scene, in order to establish contrast. That said, if that’s the case I’m not sure that Wells does that very effectively. There are occasional mentions to how peaceful it was in those days, but they are largely not the focus of this chapter. Instead, the focus is largely on the disturbances being observed from Earth. Not even really the people’s reactions to these distrubances, just the anomalies themselves. It’s rather dry in that way I suppose. Either way, the narrator makes it clear immediately that Mars is sending ships that will arrive soon, and that, judging from his reminiscences, it isn’t going to go well.
Saturday, July 16, 2016
The Time Machine - Chapters 12 and Epilogue
Overall: an interesting end, Wells. Some final thoughts.
And so the story ends. The traveler returns to his time, on the night of the dinner party, and re-emerges. I think this is probably the first time we see some direct characterization on his part. The Traveler speaks with a sort of urgency and disconnectedness that imply a potential sort of trouble that the trip has left him with. He produces the flowers that Weena gave him as evidence of his trip, and while the assembled people cannot identify the flowers, they still mostly do not believe his story. As they all leave, the narrator seems a bit changed, though.
Later, the narrator returns to ask some more questions of the Traveler, and finds him similarly erratic. Eventually, while looking away, the Traveler says he needs to attend to something, and uses the time machine to go… well who knows where. The Traveler says that he is in some ways tired of the modern era now that he’s seen other possibilities, and with that he departs. The narrator mentions in the epilogue that it’s been at least three years since the Traveler vanished and there’s been no sign of him nor his machine. The narrator is left to contemplate this, and the fate of the world around him.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Overall, I found this book to be a bit mismatched compared to Frankenstein. At times, it seemed to shift between sci-fi pontification on society and the future, while at others it bore the distinct markings of an adventure story with the set-pieces like the cave, the palace, and the burning forest. Wells’s commentary is very good when he makes it, although certainly more overt than Shelley’s, and skewed more toward a favorable view of Marxism than the more abstract issues that Shelley wrote on. Even so, I think there’s certainly some interesting themes here, especially during the “end of the world” sequence. There’s a hint at posthumanism, and economic/ecological themes peppered throughout the society of the Eloi and the Morlocks, and I kind of wonder how Wells was received in his day, as it seems like this is some pretty subversive stuff (or if not in his own day, I wonder if Wells was put on banned reading lists during the McCarthy years here in the states).
This book also gave me pause to think about genre. Like I briefly noted, the book at times feels more like an “adventure” novel, and I suppose while the lines between that and sci-fi are a bit more fluid, I was also intrigued to note that this isn’t really a time travel story as such. That is to say, the device of “time travel” does not provide the main plot of the narrative, it more acts as a vehicle for the Traveler to explore a new world. In that way, it is more akin to a utopia/dystopia novel, where the protagonist enters a society and sees it from a different lens that is meant to highlight aspects of the author’s world against this imaginary world. The fact that the story is set in the future doesn’t really seem to come into play very often until Wells uses it to think on his culture and where it might be headed. However within the world of the narrative, the land of the Eloi and Morlocks may as well be on Mars. None of this is meant as critique, just some odd final thoughts here and there.
Speaking of Mars, next time I’ll be rounding out the nineteenth century with one more Wells book. Until then, though, any and all thoughts on The Time Machine and HG Wells are welcome!
And so the story ends. The traveler returns to his time, on the night of the dinner party, and re-emerges. I think this is probably the first time we see some direct characterization on his part. The Traveler speaks with a sort of urgency and disconnectedness that imply a potential sort of trouble that the trip has left him with. He produces the flowers that Weena gave him as evidence of his trip, and while the assembled people cannot identify the flowers, they still mostly do not believe his story. As they all leave, the narrator seems a bit changed, though.
Later, the narrator returns to ask some more questions of the Traveler, and finds him similarly erratic. Eventually, while looking away, the Traveler says he needs to attend to something, and uses the time machine to go… well who knows where. The Traveler says that he is in some ways tired of the modern era now that he’s seen other possibilities, and with that he departs. The narrator mentions in the epilogue that it’s been at least three years since the Traveler vanished and there’s been no sign of him nor his machine. The narrator is left to contemplate this, and the fate of the world around him.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Overall, I found this book to be a bit mismatched compared to Frankenstein. At times, it seemed to shift between sci-fi pontification on society and the future, while at others it bore the distinct markings of an adventure story with the set-pieces like the cave, the palace, and the burning forest. Wells’s commentary is very good when he makes it, although certainly more overt than Shelley’s, and skewed more toward a favorable view of Marxism than the more abstract issues that Shelley wrote on. Even so, I think there’s certainly some interesting themes here, especially during the “end of the world” sequence. There’s a hint at posthumanism, and economic/ecological themes peppered throughout the society of the Eloi and the Morlocks, and I kind of wonder how Wells was received in his day, as it seems like this is some pretty subversive stuff (or if not in his own day, I wonder if Wells was put on banned reading lists during the McCarthy years here in the states).
This book also gave me pause to think about genre. Like I briefly noted, the book at times feels more like an “adventure” novel, and I suppose while the lines between that and sci-fi are a bit more fluid, I was also intrigued to note that this isn’t really a time travel story as such. That is to say, the device of “time travel” does not provide the main plot of the narrative, it more acts as a vehicle for the Traveler to explore a new world. In that way, it is more akin to a utopia/dystopia novel, where the protagonist enters a society and sees it from a different lens that is meant to highlight aspects of the author’s world against this imaginary world. The fact that the story is set in the future doesn’t really seem to come into play very often until Wells uses it to think on his culture and where it might be headed. However within the world of the narrative, the land of the Eloi and Morlocks may as well be on Mars. None of this is meant as critique, just some odd final thoughts here and there.
Speaking of Mars, next time I’ll be rounding out the nineteenth century with one more Wells book. Until then, though, any and all thoughts on The Time Machine and HG Wells are welcome!
The Time Machine - Chapters 10 and 11
Overall: Holy shit that chapter 11 though
SO I’m putting these two chapters together, because chapter 10 isn’t even two full pages of text and chapter 11 just a bit over three.
I don’t have much to say about chapter 10 actually. The traveler manages to re-enter the White Sphinx where he finds that his time machine is polished and looking sparklingly new. He figures it msut’ve been taken apart and spruced up by the Morlocks, who still have some knowledge of machinery about them. As he’s sitting in the machine, he’s set upon by YET ANOTHER group of Morlocks who try to eat him or do whatever it is they do to people. At first the traveler tries for one of his matches, but finds that the box is gone and that they’re the sort of match that requires a box for lighting (which I’m pretty sure are the standard matches nowadays).
Pushing the lever, the traveler goes forth into chapter 11, where he goes even further into the future. I was actually surprised that we were going to be seeing more of the future, I thought for sure we’d just head to the past and do some wrap-up for the final few chapters. Instead, the traveler goes forth to an unknown time which, I’ll admit, is some of the most hauntingly beautiful scenery I think of. The traveler is on a lonely beach with a distant dying sun setting in the west, and stars gleaming steadily overhead. There’s an intense sort of gravity to this moment that I think is magnificent as we can pretty easily tell that this is past the point of any sort of human descendants existing. The only animals that are described to us are giant crabs which.. well they’re horrifying, and the traveler does not linger long before going EVEN FURTHER into the future.
I remember an old computer game I had back in the 1990’s called TerraTopia. It was sort of a Myst-esque game, but built out of the New Age movement, so it was filled with airy ambient music and lots of wonderfully done scenery illustrations as you navigated this strange and somewhat mystical island devoid of people. The scenes at this beach gave me a lot of flashbacks to that game, this sort of reverence in the text for the mystery and sheer power of the unknown aspect of the natural world. The traveler happens to emerge at an eclipse coming over the beach, and he realizes that rather than the moon or Mercury or somesuch, that this is some altogether new and unknown planet that is working its way across the sun. That sort of scene alone is a really powerful moment, and I think it’s absolutely helped by the fact that the traveler witnesses it by himself.
SO I’m putting these two chapters together, because chapter 10 isn’t even two full pages of text and chapter 11 just a bit over three.
I don’t have much to say about chapter 10 actually. The traveler manages to re-enter the White Sphinx where he finds that his time machine is polished and looking sparklingly new. He figures it msut’ve been taken apart and spruced up by the Morlocks, who still have some knowledge of machinery about them. As he’s sitting in the machine, he’s set upon by YET ANOTHER group of Morlocks who try to eat him or do whatever it is they do to people. At first the traveler tries for one of his matches, but finds that the box is gone and that they’re the sort of match that requires a box for lighting (which I’m pretty sure are the standard matches nowadays).
Pushing the lever, the traveler goes forth into chapter 11, where he goes even further into the future. I was actually surprised that we were going to be seeing more of the future, I thought for sure we’d just head to the past and do some wrap-up for the final few chapters. Instead, the traveler goes forth to an unknown time which, I’ll admit, is some of the most hauntingly beautiful scenery I think of. The traveler is on a lonely beach with a distant dying sun setting in the west, and stars gleaming steadily overhead. There’s an intense sort of gravity to this moment that I think is magnificent as we can pretty easily tell that this is past the point of any sort of human descendants existing. The only animals that are described to us are giant crabs which.. well they’re horrifying, and the traveler does not linger long before going EVEN FURTHER into the future.
I remember an old computer game I had back in the 1990’s called TerraTopia. It was sort of a Myst-esque game, but built out of the New Age movement, so it was filled with airy ambient music and lots of wonderfully done scenery illustrations as you navigated this strange and somewhat mystical island devoid of people. The scenes at this beach gave me a lot of flashbacks to that game, this sort of reverence in the text for the mystery and sheer power of the unknown aspect of the natural world. The traveler happens to emerge at an eclipse coming over the beach, and he realizes that rather than the moon or Mercury or somesuch, that this is some altogether new and unknown planet that is working its way across the sun. That sort of scene alone is a really powerful moment, and I think it’s absolutely helped by the fact that the traveler witnesses it by himself.
The Time Machine - Chapter 9
Overall: I’m honestly surprised that when The Traveler re-emerged in his dining room, he didn’t look like Robin Williams in Jumanji.
Night falls on the forest where Weena and the Traveler have found themselves, and as they wander (trying to make their way back to the White Sphinx, where the time machine went missing) they are set upon by Morlocks. As they’re being carried off though, the time traveler begins to fight back. At first he lights the camphor, and then a nearby tree. However, he seems to be knocked out and when he wakes up he’s being carried off by Morlocks.
From here this chapter got surprisingly violent. Like, traveler begins bludgeoning these things with his crowbar and he fucking relishes it! After downing a few Morlocks, he finds that he’s slowly able to see them in the darkness and that they’re running around him and away from him. As the sky lights up he realizes that the tree he had set alight has now caught the whole forest on fire, causing the Morlocks to all run away. Eventually the traveler and the Morlocks take refuge from the flames (I think on a hilltop, which isn’t how fires work, but whatever).
As the day breaks, the traveler ties grass to his feet (really) to avoid singing them on the remnants of the fire, and he realizes that Weena is apparently dead. He notes that he has some odd detachment from this in his retelling of the event, because he’s apparently spent a fair amount of time already mourning her in the future. However, it’s still sad. I’m not quite sure if Weena’s dead though… we didn’t see a body or anything, it’d be kind of strange to kill basically the only character with a name off page.
Night falls on the forest where Weena and the Traveler have found themselves, and as they wander (trying to make their way back to the White Sphinx, where the time machine went missing) they are set upon by Morlocks. As they’re being carried off though, the time traveler begins to fight back. At first he lights the camphor, and then a nearby tree. However, he seems to be knocked out and when he wakes up he’s being carried off by Morlocks.
From here this chapter got surprisingly violent. Like, traveler begins bludgeoning these things with his crowbar and he fucking relishes it! After downing a few Morlocks, he finds that he’s slowly able to see them in the darkness and that they’re running around him and away from him. As the sky lights up he realizes that the tree he had set alight has now caught the whole forest on fire, causing the Morlocks to all run away. Eventually the traveler and the Morlocks take refuge from the flames (I think on a hilltop, which isn’t how fires work, but whatever).
As the day breaks, the traveler ties grass to his feet (really) to avoid singing them on the remnants of the fire, and he realizes that Weena is apparently dead. He notes that he has some odd detachment from this in his retelling of the event, because he’s apparently spent a fair amount of time already mourning her in the future. However, it’s still sad. I’m not quite sure if Weena’s dead though… we didn’t see a body or anything, it’d be kind of strange to kill basically the only character with a name off page.
The Time Machine - Chapter 8
Overall: Kinda feels like setup. A cool setpiece though
Well, it turns out the Palace of Green Porcelain is some kind of museum/library place. Wandering around in it, the Traveler and Weena try to find something that might help them against the Morlocks. The whole scene felt very much to me like something out of The Last of Us, with there apparently being Morlocks lurking somewhere in the building, and our two protagonists having to avoid their notice. Eventually, the Traveler finds some matches and a bottle of camphor oil, as well as an iron crowbar that he hopes to use in opening a pair of bronze doors.
Much of the rest of this chapter though, feels somewhat like relationship building between Weena and The Traveler. There’s a really bizarre sequence midway through the middle in which the two of them dance to a tune that the Traveler whistles. While that might be a cute scene elsewhere, it really just feels a bit out of place in the midst of this abandoned building exploration.
Also, the Traveler’s getting more and more bloodthirsty as the fight with the Morlocks looms ahead. He almost decides to leave Weena so that he could go kill the Morlocks he hears in the museum using the crowbar but he decides against it. Wondering how this will progress.
Finally, I’m going to predict that he left himself the matches and camphor oil. He remarks upon how unusual it was to find the items there, and I think it’ll end up being a sort of time loop being created.
Well, it turns out the Palace of Green Porcelain is some kind of museum/library place. Wandering around in it, the Traveler and Weena try to find something that might help them against the Morlocks. The whole scene felt very much to me like something out of The Last of Us, with there apparently being Morlocks lurking somewhere in the building, and our two protagonists having to avoid their notice. Eventually, the Traveler finds some matches and a bottle of camphor oil, as well as an iron crowbar that he hopes to use in opening a pair of bronze doors.
Much of the rest of this chapter though, feels somewhat like relationship building between Weena and The Traveler. There’s a really bizarre sequence midway through the middle in which the two of them dance to a tune that the Traveler whistles. While that might be a cute scene elsewhere, it really just feels a bit out of place in the midst of this abandoned building exploration.
Also, the Traveler’s getting more and more bloodthirsty as the fight with the Morlocks looms ahead. He almost decides to leave Weena so that he could go kill the Morlocks he hears in the museum using the crowbar but he decides against it. Wondering how this will progress.
Finally, I’m going to predict that he left himself the matches and camphor oil. He remarks upon how unusual it was to find the items there, and I think it’ll end up being a sort of time loop being created.
The Time Machine - Chapter 7
Overall: The Traveler comes to a horrifying revelation, and contemplates it.
This is a slower chapter than the previous one (would’ve been kind of surprised if it had kept that momentum, honestly) but one that I think is necessary. After escaping the clutches of the Morlocks, the traveler spends some time wandering about with Weena, and trying to avoid the realization that’s dawning on him: that the Morlocks’ diet is the Eloi.
At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if the book goes with this, or if this turns out to be another misdirect. The Traveler’s already made two guesses about the society surrounding him that he’s rethought, so maybe this one will turn out to be another feint. Even so, the traveler is frightened enough that he’s dreading the new moon, which the Eloi seem to fear as well, as it indicates when the Morlocks will come above ground and likely feed on the upper-landers. The Traveler decides that he’d best arm himself with some sort of torch for when the new moon comes along.
One thing that’s been brought up in a few chapters at this point is the Palace of Green Porcelain, which the Traveler and Weena pass at various points. The place seems to be locked up but I’m excited to see what’s in it, as it’s what the traveler is now aiming to access.
Also, I really hope the traveler doesn’t form some sort of romantic attachment to Weena. She’s consistently described in childlike terms and it’d be really creepy if he does. He seems to mostly be treating her alright for now, like an adult who’s just found themselves wandering around with a child ought to behave (protective/indulging, I guess) but I don’t have much confidence in old books for this kind of thing to continue
This is a slower chapter than the previous one (would’ve been kind of surprised if it had kept that momentum, honestly) but one that I think is necessary. After escaping the clutches of the Morlocks, the traveler spends some time wandering about with Weena, and trying to avoid the realization that’s dawning on him: that the Morlocks’ diet is the Eloi.
At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if the book goes with this, or if this turns out to be another misdirect. The Traveler’s already made two guesses about the society surrounding him that he’s rethought, so maybe this one will turn out to be another feint. Even so, the traveler is frightened enough that he’s dreading the new moon, which the Eloi seem to fear as well, as it indicates when the Morlocks will come above ground and likely feed on the upper-landers. The Traveler decides that he’d best arm himself with some sort of torch for when the new moon comes along.
One thing that’s been brought up in a few chapters at this point is the Palace of Green Porcelain, which the Traveler and Weena pass at various points. The place seems to be locked up but I’m excited to see what’s in it, as it’s what the traveler is now aiming to access.
Also, I really hope the traveler doesn’t form some sort of romantic attachment to Weena. She’s consistently described in childlike terms and it’d be really creepy if he does. He seems to mostly be treating her alright for now, like an adult who’s just found themselves wandering around with a child ought to behave (protective/indulging, I guess) but I don’t have much confidence in old books for this kind of thing to continue
Saturday, July 9, 2016
The Time Machine - Chapter 6
Overall: Well that was horrifying (TW for nyctophobia)
It occurred to me even then, that in the course of a few days the moon must pass through its last quarter, and the nights grow dark, when the appearances of these unpleasant creatures from below, these whitened Lemurs, this new vermin that had replaced the old, might be more abundant
The descent was effected by means of metallic bars projecting from the sides of the well, and these being adapted to the needs of a creature much smaller and lighter than myself, I was speedily cramped and fatigued by the descent. And not simply fatigued! One of the bars bent suddenly under my weight, and almost swung me off into the blackness beneath.
‘I do not know how long I lay. I was roused by a soft hand touching my face. Starting up in the darkness I snatched at my matches and, hastily striking one, I saw three stooping white creatures similar to the one I had seen above ground in the ruin, hastily retreating before the light.
But, so soon as I struck a match in order to see them, they fled incontinently, vanishing into dark gutters and tunnels, from which their eyes glared at me in the strangest fashion.
Some way down the central vista was a little table of white metal, laid with what seemed a meal. The Morlocks at any rate were carnivorous! Even at the time, I remember wondering what large animal could have survived to furnish the red joint I saw.
and it was only with my last glimpse of light I discovered that my store of matches had run low
Now, as I say, I had four left, and while I stood in the dark, a hand touched mine, lank fingers came feeling over my face, and I was sensible of a peculiar unpleasant odour. I fancied I heard the breathing of a crowd of those dreadful little beings about me
‘In a moment I was clutched by several hands, and there was no mistaking that they were trying to haul me back. I struck another light, and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked—those pale, chinless faces and great, lidless, pinkish-grey eyes!’
I disengaged myself from the clutches of the Morlocks and was speedily clambering up the shaft, while they stayed peering and blinking up at me: all but one little wretch who followed me for some way, and well-nigh secured my boot as a trophy
It occurred to me even then, that in the course of a few days the moon must pass through its last quarter, and the nights grow dark, when the appearances of these unpleasant creatures from below, these whitened Lemurs, this new vermin that had replaced the old, might be more abundant
The descent was effected by means of metallic bars projecting from the sides of the well, and these being adapted to the needs of a creature much smaller and lighter than myself, I was speedily cramped and fatigued by the descent. And not simply fatigued! One of the bars bent suddenly under my weight, and almost swung me off into the blackness beneath.
‘I do not know how long I lay. I was roused by a soft hand touching my face. Starting up in the darkness I snatched at my matches and, hastily striking one, I saw three stooping white creatures similar to the one I had seen above ground in the ruin, hastily retreating before the light.
But, so soon as I struck a match in order to see them, they fled incontinently, vanishing into dark gutters and tunnels, from which their eyes glared at me in the strangest fashion.
Some way down the central vista was a little table of white metal, laid with what seemed a meal. The Morlocks at any rate were carnivorous! Even at the time, I remember wondering what large animal could have survived to furnish the red joint I saw.
and it was only with my last glimpse of light I discovered that my store of matches had run low
Now, as I say, I had four left, and while I stood in the dark, a hand touched mine, lank fingers came feeling over my face, and I was sensible of a peculiar unpleasant odour. I fancied I heard the breathing of a crowd of those dreadful little beings about me
‘In a moment I was clutched by several hands, and there was no mistaking that they were trying to haul me back. I struck another light, and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked—those pale, chinless faces and great, lidless, pinkish-grey eyes!’
I disengaged myself from the clutches of the Morlocks and was speedily clambering up the shaft, while they stayed peering and blinking up at me: all but one little wretch who followed me for some way, and well-nigh secured my boot as a trophy
The Time Machine - Chapter 5
Overall: Well here we go, Morlocks oh my
SO I’m beginning to wonder if we’re going to go to any other time periods during this book. Almost halfway through by this point, so we’ll see I suppose. The Time Traveler goes back looking for his time machine only to find that it is missing. Frantic, he searches for it before coming upon… well, I’m not exactly sure how to describe it. It’s another type of being living in this world, called a Morlock. So, I know enough about Morlocks through cultural osmosis (and the X-men) to know that essentially they’re subterranean creatures. I googled the name and it came up with some monsters which look a lot like these guys from Rick and Morty.
The Time Traveler, again, is interesting here in that he’s less interested in the fact that these creatures exist so much as he is in figuring out what role they must play in the society of the Eloi (the name of the above-ground creatures). He begins to surmise that there’s a social stratification by which the Eloi get to live in relative splendor and peace while the Morlocks must toil away underground in some sort of factory that keeps goods supplied to the surface.
The Traveler then meets an Eloi named Weena who he, quite frankly, treats rather brusquely in trying to get information about the Morlocks from her. She’s distressed by the whole thing and the Traveler ends up placating her by lighting a match (so basically dangling his keys). He’s still unsure where the machine is, but now he’s interested in these Morlocks and hopes to find out more about them. I want to see where this goes.
The Time Machine - Chapter 4
Overall: Well that got philosophical, much more than I thought it would be.
So I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting out of this book but if this chapter is much indication (the book is only 80-some pages, so I’m coming up on halfway through) then The Time Machine is a lot more philosophically inclined than I had thought it would be. It isn’t Heidegger or anything, don’t get me wrong, but I’m comparing it to Jules Verne, who’s probably the name most often invoked alongside Wells when considering this era of science fiction.
However, at least given what I’ve read of Verne (about a quarter of Journey to the Center of the Earth), he was much more into the adventure aspect of science fiction than the more contemplative side which Shelley had introduced and, if this chapter is much to go on, Wells continued. The Time Traveler spends his time in this chapter among the people here in the future (the year 802,701!!!!) and finds them very different than he had expected. Rather than hyper-advanced polymaths, the people are diminutive and childlike. They are peaceful, vegan (as it seems most animals have died out) and generally happy and accepting of The Time Traveler. He lives among the people’s homes and takes some observer’s part in their society, finding them to be interested in him, but childlike in that they tend to lose interest quickly and go about whatever it was they had been doing.
One day, as the sun is setting, the Time Traveler comes upon a hill and proceeds upon a big moment of introspection regarding humanity and the state of the world. While some of it is kinda loaded with evolutionary psychology biofacts (blech) there is a degree of insight into what he says regarding the promulgation of the species and a somewhat peaceful/accepting view of humans at the edge of their extinction. Like, I know this was written while communism wasn’t much more than a theory, but jeez, I have to imagine this book may’ve been challenged throughout the 20th century for its fairly favorable view of these people who The Time Traveler supposes must’ve been the result of a communist restructuring of society at some point in the intervening time.
I imagine this won’t last much longer than this chapter, but it’s really interesting to me when books have these moments in them which touch on wider philosophical/political trends occurring in the world surrounding the text (it’s also why I don’t tend to subscribe to the whole “Death of the Author” thing).
Also: It just occurred to me as I read this chapter. What was the Time Traveler called before he went into the time traveling business?
So I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting out of this book but if this chapter is much indication (the book is only 80-some pages, so I’m coming up on halfway through) then The Time Machine is a lot more philosophically inclined than I had thought it would be. It isn’t Heidegger or anything, don’t get me wrong, but I’m comparing it to Jules Verne, who’s probably the name most often invoked alongside Wells when considering this era of science fiction.
However, at least given what I’ve read of Verne (about a quarter of Journey to the Center of the Earth), he was much more into the adventure aspect of science fiction than the more contemplative side which Shelley had introduced and, if this chapter is much to go on, Wells continued. The Time Traveler spends his time in this chapter among the people here in the future (the year 802,701!!!!) and finds them very different than he had expected. Rather than hyper-advanced polymaths, the people are diminutive and childlike. They are peaceful, vegan (as it seems most animals have died out) and generally happy and accepting of The Time Traveler. He lives among the people’s homes and takes some observer’s part in their society, finding them to be interested in him, but childlike in that they tend to lose interest quickly and go about whatever it was they had been doing.
One day, as the sun is setting, the Time Traveler comes upon a hill and proceeds upon a big moment of introspection regarding humanity and the state of the world. While some of it is kinda loaded with evolutionary psychology biofacts (blech) there is a degree of insight into what he says regarding the promulgation of the species and a somewhat peaceful/accepting view of humans at the edge of their extinction. Like, I know this was written while communism wasn’t much more than a theory, but jeez, I have to imagine this book may’ve been challenged throughout the 20th century for its fairly favorable view of these people who The Time Traveler supposes must’ve been the result of a communist restructuring of society at some point in the intervening time.
I imagine this won’t last much longer than this chapter, but it’s really interesting to me when books have these moments in them which touch on wider philosophical/political trends occurring in the world surrounding the text (it’s also why I don’t tend to subscribe to the whole “Death of the Author” thing).
Also: It just occurred to me as I read this chapter. What was the Time Traveler called before he went into the time traveling business?
The Time Machine - Chapter 3
TW for mention of chronic illness
Overall: Huh, so that’s where that image comes from
You know, for all the description that goes on in this chapter, not much actually “happens”. The Time Traveler begins to relay his story, and particularly of his first using the time machine, which occurred just earlier that morning. Sitting in the machine, he pulls a lever and suddenly time starts to move in fast-pace all around him, while he sort of phases through it. I thought the description was actually very interesting here, of how the sun seemed to almost bounce up and down over the horizon as the days went on. How eventually everything just became a grey blur as the surroundings began to speed up during the sequence, and how the Time Traveler apparently worried about the possibility of phasing into something—that is, if when he stops the time machine there’s something occupying the space that he or the machine occupy. It’s a valid concern, but one which our time traveler seems to have forgotten about until the actual moment of travel occurs.
When the Time Traveler arrives in the distant future, it is initially hailing and miserable. The Time Traveler becomes scared and is about to head back home when the weather clears and he is approached by a human figure in a robe. The description he gives actually just conjured this image to mind
That said, I do have to call attention to one phrase the Time Traveler uses in describing these people, saying they reminded him of “of the more beautiful kind of consumptive”… which, like, did people fetishize that back in the day? That’s so fucked up.
Overall: Huh, so that’s where that image comes from
You know, for all the description that goes on in this chapter, not much actually “happens”. The Time Traveler begins to relay his story, and particularly of his first using the time machine, which occurred just earlier that morning. Sitting in the machine, he pulls a lever and suddenly time starts to move in fast-pace all around him, while he sort of phases through it. I thought the description was actually very interesting here, of how the sun seemed to almost bounce up and down over the horizon as the days went on. How eventually everything just became a grey blur as the surroundings began to speed up during the sequence, and how the Time Traveler apparently worried about the possibility of phasing into something—that is, if when he stops the time machine there’s something occupying the space that he or the machine occupy. It’s a valid concern, but one which our time traveler seems to have forgotten about until the actual moment of travel occurs.
When the Time Traveler arrives in the distant future, it is initially hailing and miserable. The Time Traveler becomes scared and is about to head back home when the weather clears and he is approached by a human figure in a robe. The description he gives actually just conjured this image to mind
That said, I do have to call attention to one phrase the Time Traveler uses in describing these people, saying they reminded him of “of the more beautiful kind of consumptive”… which, like, did people fetishize that back in the day? That’s so fucked up.
The Time Machine - Chapter 2
Overall: Okay now it makes sense. Also this is a pretty hilarious setup so far.
I hope we never see the time machine. Following this kind of setup it seems like we’re going in for another “story within a story” structure this time. But there’s a possibility/suspicion being expressed by some of the characters that whatever the Time Traveler says is likely just some elaborate trick, and honestly, I kind of hope the story keeps it ambiguous on that front. I could see it going either way, but ambiguity is one of my favorite literary tropes (though I hate it in social situations). That said, the biggest question on my mind has to do with the unusual choice of character naming here.
So let me see if I can make a list of the characters so far: Narrator, Blank (don’t know much about Blank), The Editor and the Journalist (both kinda showboaters and seem like they’ve taken the yellow journalism thing whole hog), the Psychologist (a skeptic), Fillby (speaks a bit tersely), The Doctor (/shrug/), The Medical Man (seems pretty much like the calm one here), and the Time Traveler.
What is this assortment of people? What brings them together? They seem to be casually acquainted with one another, but it seems odd that they’ve apparently all met several times and the narrator doesn’t know many of their names, not even the name of their host (though I think that one’s intentional).
As to what happens, the Time Traveler invites his… associates(?) over for dinner the week after the demonstration in chapter 1. He himself arrives rather late to the meal and as he walks in he is covered in dust and cuts. The others poke fun at him, asking if he was time traveling, to which he bluntly responds that he was, now hand me the mutton thanks. After a bit more prodding and eating, the Time Traveler explains that earlier this afternoon he started traveling through time, stayed 8 days in another time, and then came back during dinner. I had totally forgotten that time travel means that the amount of time spent in any one period becomes flexible. Somehow I had thought that this would hold to my usual visualization of time travel stories in which if you go into the future and stay there for 8 days, you’ll come back and 8 days will have passed. I wonder if he’s going far enough into the future/past to avoid running into other versions of himself.
Seating his guests down, the Time Traveler gets ready to recount his traveling experience. I’m looking forward to it.
I hope we never see the time machine. Following this kind of setup it seems like we’re going in for another “story within a story” structure this time. But there’s a possibility/suspicion being expressed by some of the characters that whatever the Time Traveler says is likely just some elaborate trick, and honestly, I kind of hope the story keeps it ambiguous on that front. I could see it going either way, but ambiguity is one of my favorite literary tropes (though I hate it in social situations). That said, the biggest question on my mind has to do with the unusual choice of character naming here.
So let me see if I can make a list of the characters so far: Narrator, Blank (don’t know much about Blank), The Editor and the Journalist (both kinda showboaters and seem like they’ve taken the yellow journalism thing whole hog), the Psychologist (a skeptic), Fillby (speaks a bit tersely), The Doctor (/shrug/), The Medical Man (seems pretty much like the calm one here), and the Time Traveler.
What is this assortment of people? What brings them together? They seem to be casually acquainted with one another, but it seems odd that they’ve apparently all met several times and the narrator doesn’t know many of their names, not even the name of their host (though I think that one’s intentional).
As to what happens, the Time Traveler invites his… associates(?) over for dinner the week after the demonstration in chapter 1. He himself arrives rather late to the meal and as he walks in he is covered in dust and cuts. The others poke fun at him, asking if he was time traveling, to which he bluntly responds that he was, now hand me the mutton thanks. After a bit more prodding and eating, the Time Traveler explains that earlier this afternoon he started traveling through time, stayed 8 days in another time, and then came back during dinner. I had totally forgotten that time travel means that the amount of time spent in any one period becomes flexible. Somehow I had thought that this would hold to my usual visualization of time travel stories in which if you go into the future and stay there for 8 days, you’ll come back and 8 days will have passed. I wonder if he’s going far enough into the future/past to avoid running into other versions of himself.
Seating his guests down, the Time Traveler gets ready to recount his traveling experience. I’m looking forward to it.
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.
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.
Sunday, July 3, 2016
Frankenstein - Chapter 24
Chapter 24
Overall: a good ending, despite the sadness, the best they could've hoped for.
Thus concludes Vic’s story. Or rather, he concludes it basically how it might’ve been inferred. He’s spent a long time chasing Adam down. Adam, for his part, is resolved to keep Victor alive so that the chase can continue and Victor will feel more misery. That’s pretty fucking sadistic, gotta say. Vic is resigned to his death at this point. He is only holding onto life out of a sense of kinship with Walton and the possibility of enacting revenge against Adam.
Vic’s attitude is still kinda… well it’s mixed. Now that we’ve returned to Walton’s narration, I think the book allows us to see in some way how pitiful Victor has really become. which I appreciate. He’s haggard, he sleeps a lot (as that’s the only way he can feel happiness), he talks big about how people should have the courage to accomplish their dreams or die trying, but it’s so apparent that he’s about to do the latter that it isn’t much of a surprise that the sailors on Walton’s ship, despite Vic’s protests, ask him to turn the ship around and head back for England. Vic, in his final moments, is kind of delusional about his memory of the events that have proceeded. He says that he always tried to do his best by Adam. That’s bullshit, he only ever even considered Adam’s feelings after Adam told his backstory. He says he refused to make another for the good of humanity. Okay, sure, but there were easy ways to avoid a population of them and in so doing you directly led to the deaths of several innocent people.
For his part, Walton wants to continue, but upon seeing Vic’s death he becomes distraught. Later that night, Adam appears in Vic’s cabin and is distraught over the death of his enemy. Adam here is… really also pretty bad. He talks so much like Vic. About how no one can understand the pain that he feels. How the entirety of existence is conspired against him. Taking the body of Vic, he sets out toward the North pole, where he says he’s going to light a fire and burn himself to death. That way he’ll leave no remains of his body for a person to try to emulate. Adam leaves, and Walton is left to contemplate everything that’s just happened.
So that's Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Overall, I was surprised by how different the novel is to the popular understanding of the Frankenstein story. Even from the get-go, the positioning of the story starting from a first-person recounting of Vic's childhood shows that the scope is going to be much more broad than the "guy creates monster, monster escapes" narrative. I liked the explorations of nature a lot and the subtle contrasts between Vic, Clerval, and Adam with regard to that. I have since learned that Shelley meant this as a critique of the hubris of science. I think that, if that's the case, it may be rather temporal as it reads more of a critique of God or religion generally, with Vic playing the role of a neglectful/absent creator who leaves Adam to his own devices, struggling in a hostile world. Seriously, if Vic hadn't made Adam ugly or had arsed to stay around his creation, then much of the conflict seems like it would've gone down a different course. I know that's the point, that he doesn't, but like I said I'm just examining this sort of disconnect between a critique of science/critique of religion that jumps out at me within the book.
As for what I'll be reading next: I'll be jumping forward a bit in time to the late 1800's and going with a much shorter story. I was originally going to read Jules Verne's "A Journey to the Center of the Earth" but realized through reading some of it that I really knew much of the story already and that the book wasn't really grabbing me. So instead I'll tackle two works by his counterpart: HG Wells! Starting with The Time Machine and then probably doing War of the Worlds before moving into the 20th century.
Overall: a good ending, despite the sadness, the best they could've hoped for.
Thus concludes Vic’s story. Or rather, he concludes it basically how it might’ve been inferred. He’s spent a long time chasing Adam down. Adam, for his part, is resolved to keep Victor alive so that the chase can continue and Victor will feel more misery. That’s pretty fucking sadistic, gotta say. Vic is resigned to his death at this point. He is only holding onto life out of a sense of kinship with Walton and the possibility of enacting revenge against Adam.
Vic’s attitude is still kinda… well it’s mixed. Now that we’ve returned to Walton’s narration, I think the book allows us to see in some way how pitiful Victor has really become. which I appreciate. He’s haggard, he sleeps a lot (as that’s the only way he can feel happiness), he talks big about how people should have the courage to accomplish their dreams or die trying, but it’s so apparent that he’s about to do the latter that it isn’t much of a surprise that the sailors on Walton’s ship, despite Vic’s protests, ask him to turn the ship around and head back for England. Vic, in his final moments, is kind of delusional about his memory of the events that have proceeded. He says that he always tried to do his best by Adam. That’s bullshit, he only ever even considered Adam’s feelings after Adam told his backstory. He says he refused to make another for the good of humanity. Okay, sure, but there were easy ways to avoid a population of them and in so doing you directly led to the deaths of several innocent people.
For his part, Walton wants to continue, but upon seeing Vic’s death he becomes distraught. Later that night, Adam appears in Vic’s cabin and is distraught over the death of his enemy. Adam here is… really also pretty bad. He talks so much like Vic. About how no one can understand the pain that he feels. How the entirety of existence is conspired against him. Taking the body of Vic, he sets out toward the North pole, where he says he’s going to light a fire and burn himself to death. That way he’ll leave no remains of his body for a person to try to emulate. Adam leaves, and Walton is left to contemplate everything that’s just happened.
So that's Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Overall, I was surprised by how different the novel is to the popular understanding of the Frankenstein story. Even from the get-go, the positioning of the story starting from a first-person recounting of Vic's childhood shows that the scope is going to be much more broad than the "guy creates monster, monster escapes" narrative. I liked the explorations of nature a lot and the subtle contrasts between Vic, Clerval, and Adam with regard to that. I have since learned that Shelley meant this as a critique of the hubris of science. I think that, if that's the case, it may be rather temporal as it reads more of a critique of God or religion generally, with Vic playing the role of a neglectful/absent creator who leaves Adam to his own devices, struggling in a hostile world. Seriously, if Vic hadn't made Adam ugly or had arsed to stay around his creation, then much of the conflict seems like it would've gone down a different course. I know that's the point, that he doesn't, but like I said I'm just examining this sort of disconnect between a critique of science/critique of religion that jumps out at me within the book.
As for what I'll be reading next: I'll be jumping forward a bit in time to the late 1800's and going with a much shorter story. I was originally going to read Jules Verne's "A Journey to the Center of the Earth" but realized through reading some of it that I really knew much of the story already and that the book wasn't really grabbing me. So instead I'll tackle two works by his counterpart: HG Wells! Starting with The Time Machine and then probably doing War of the Worlds before moving into the 20th century.
Frankenstein - Chapter 23
Overall: Well here we are
I suppose this comes with any of these sort of precursors to a genre. I know that Frankenstein is considered the first sci-fi book by many, although precursors to the genre are certainly found in older work: More’s Utopia, Cavendish’s The Blazing World, hell even The Tempest shows some shades of what would later turn into pretty standard sci-fi tropes. I’ve heard it described that sci-fi is what makes the improbable possible, as opposed to fantasy, which makes the impossible probable. I take this to mean that sci-fi is generally concerned with things which could potentially, under some circumstance, occur and puts them into a scenario in which we could easily imagine and examine their occurrence. That examination is also key, I think. I remember back in middle school I began reading some of the more pop sci-fi out there. By that I mean the sci-fi that’s so often associated with space operas. Full of byzantine military descriptions, incalculably dense (and probably entirely impracticable) battle scenes, and characters fit more for the military than for the worlds which they inhabited. Particularly I remember the novelizations that came with the original Halo games. These books weren’t very good. It wasn’t until a good bit later that I made the connection that the dystopian novels which I loved--1984, Oryx and Crake, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, Watchmen--would fall under the pale of sci-fi by many metrics. Thus, when I was in undergrad and began taking some creative writing classes, I was taken somewhat aback when my instructor said that genre fiction was categorically incapable of being literature. That we shouldn’t write it and expect to be good writers in the same career. At once, I understood the claim, based on the teeming amounts of pulp works that seem to permeate the genre then and now (though certainly I’ll be reading more of those as a part of this project) but I also began to question what he was on about. I referenced books like Brave New World and The Handmaid’s Tale and he said that those didn’t count as sci-fi, they were “speculative fiction”.
I guess, what I’m trying to get at here, is that although Frankenstein is considered the progenitor of the genre, I shouldn’t expect it to have all of the things that I do love in sci-fi. I love the moments where sci-fi ponders what it is to be human, to exist, to wonder where we are headed based on where we are. Seeing at times whether it’s tinged with a sort of optimism about humankind, or if it’s more cynical based on the issues that are presently affecting the world. In some works, going to Mars is seen as a continuation of manifest destiny, of a spirit of adventure and romance that I’m sure may’ve been present in the age of exploration. In other works, Mars is seen as an example of class disparity, a sort of metaphor for segregation. The manner in which sci-fi approaches its subjects largely depends on the politics of the writer and the message they hope to convey.
Frankenstein, meanwhile, is steeped not only in sci-fi, but in gothic horror, revenge tales, and family drama. I think, perhaps, that were I more a fan of those genres I’d be a bit more charitable toward these parts of the book. However, there’s a reason this is ‘Temra reads sci-fi’ and not Temra reads ‘fantasy’ or ‘temra reads horror’. While those projects may emerge out of this, and of course genres tend to blend together, I’ve always liked sci-fi above fantasy, and while I enjoy horror, I tend to think it works better visually than in paper form. At least the sort of horror that I prefer. As I noted last time, the kind of horror Frankenstein seems to work with comes upon a sort of presumed revulsion/abhorrence to the creature and his murders. If that’s the extent of it, though, then I’d as well read Poe. I think he did this sort of gothic horror at the heart of a grisly tale better. Shelley does do wonderfully in what would later become science fiction’s examinations of humanity, consciousness, nature, etc. but that is all just tied down at times by this pretty standard fare enemies narrative.
Vic and Elizabeth have their honeymoon, it is cut short by Elizabeth’s murder. Vic is somehow still bewildered that this could possibly have happened. The only characters in this novel seem to be Vic, Captain Walton (only perfunctory), Adam, and perhaps the De Lacey family. Clerval, Elizabeth, William, Justine, Papa Frank, Caroline, Ernest, M. Krempe and M. Waldman, Mr. Kerwin, they all seem more like props that have one personality trait which they spout so that Vic or Adam can regard/murder them. What was Elizabeth ever getting out of the relationship with Victor? We only ever see her framed in relationship to him and his story about Adam. Given how central she is, and how Shelley was willing to devote an entire chapter to the financial woes of the De Lacey family, I feel like we could’ve spent more time getting to know her. Learn about her struggles after Justine’s execution, about her sticky situation with the Lavenza family, something! Instead, Elizabeth and basically everyone else are just objects used to advance the plot of Vic and Adam. It’s kind of repugnant when I look at it that way. It wouldn’t be so bad if the narrative didn’t seem to particularly favor Victor. He's only ever briefly called out for his behavior, though, instead, the narrative really seems to frame him as our protagonist who, since he’s basically right about everything, is totally justified in assuming that his pain is in some way unique. Which is just pretty gross over all.
Vic attempts to persuade the local authorities to hunt Adam, but they basically refuse him. From there, he becomes resolved to figure out some other way to continue the hunt.
Frankenstein - Chapter 22
Overall: a denouement before a final showdown. One more go around with the fam.
Maybe I’m just approaching this book the wrong way. Frankenstein seems sort of divided in what it wants to be in many ways. On the one hand you’ve got a story concerned with human nature, nature nature, and what the relation is between a being and its creator. On the other hand is a fairly routine melodrama about the relationship between Victor Frankenstein and his reluctance/inability to relate easily to his family. Which could also be a compelling story, Kafka did wonders with this theme, but the way it’s written in Shelley just doesn’t seem to click with me.
I think some of it has to do with how little the characters seem to progress throughout this. Vic has undergone some slight change, but there really isn’t much that distinguishes the Vic we found up in the Arctic from the one who’s lamenting his situation in Switzerland. Characters like Clerval and Elizabeth, likewise, are pretty static. Maybe they’ve got something going on by way of growth internally, but Victor does not seem particularly interested in finding out what that is. There’s only so many times I can hear people worry about Victor and he turns them away with the same schtick before it starts to get old and I wonder whether these people would actually stick around Vic. I’m not saying that they should leave him, but so many times in our world people who go through this kind of depression wind up isolated and it feels a little disingenuous of Shelley to present such an unconditionally supportive network for Vic. They’re all kind of props to support his story rather than people.
Vic and his father return to Switzerland, where Vic decides that, since Adam might decide to murder more people during the interim between now and his marriage, he’ll just go ahead and get married.
Elizabeth writes a letter wondering whether or not Victor loves her or not. Again, this feels like we’re rehashing stuff. Vic already had this conversation with Papa Frank and it was the same conclusion reached. Yes, Vic does love Elizabeth.
The two are wed and go to Elizabeth’s family’s villa for their honeymoon. It seems to be going fine, but Vic is concerned that things will soon become much much worse. His narrative also confirms this when he says that this was the last time he felt happiness. I’m predicting Elizabeth is going to die next chapter, and we’ll find out how Vic came to be chasing Adam up in the Arctic.
Maybe I’m just approaching this book the wrong way. Frankenstein seems sort of divided in what it wants to be in many ways. On the one hand you’ve got a story concerned with human nature, nature nature, and what the relation is between a being and its creator. On the other hand is a fairly routine melodrama about the relationship between Victor Frankenstein and his reluctance/inability to relate easily to his family. Which could also be a compelling story, Kafka did wonders with this theme, but the way it’s written in Shelley just doesn’t seem to click with me.
I think some of it has to do with how little the characters seem to progress throughout this. Vic has undergone some slight change, but there really isn’t much that distinguishes the Vic we found up in the Arctic from the one who’s lamenting his situation in Switzerland. Characters like Clerval and Elizabeth, likewise, are pretty static. Maybe they’ve got something going on by way of growth internally, but Victor does not seem particularly interested in finding out what that is. There’s only so many times I can hear people worry about Victor and he turns them away with the same schtick before it starts to get old and I wonder whether these people would actually stick around Vic. I’m not saying that they should leave him, but so many times in our world people who go through this kind of depression wind up isolated and it feels a little disingenuous of Shelley to present such an unconditionally supportive network for Vic. They’re all kind of props to support his story rather than people.
Vic and his father return to Switzerland, where Vic decides that, since Adam might decide to murder more people during the interim between now and his marriage, he’ll just go ahead and get married.
Elizabeth writes a letter wondering whether or not Victor loves her or not. Again, this feels like we’re rehashing stuff. Vic already had this conversation with Papa Frank and it was the same conclusion reached. Yes, Vic does love Elizabeth.
The two are wed and go to Elizabeth’s family’s villa for their honeymoon. It seems to be going fine, but Vic is concerned that things will soon become much much worse. His narrative also confirms this when he says that this was the last time he felt happiness. I’m predicting Elizabeth is going to die next chapter, and we’ll find out how Vic came to be chasing Adam up in the Arctic.
Frankenstein - Chapter 21
Overall: Yeah it was Clerval.
So Vic’s… well he’s still Vic after all this time. Upon hearing that someone’s been murdered he regards the tale with disinterest until he hears that the method of murder was strangulation. At which point, suddenly, he realizes that this could potentially be related to the guy who just left him swearing vengeance on him and his family. Is murder such a common occurrence around Vic that it only arouses interest if the method shows that it might be related?
When Vic sees Clerval’s body, well he’s not in a good way. He immediately begins shouting in French and is taken by a fever for the next two months while he lives in a cell. The local magistrate is kind enough, but rather convinced that Vic murdered Clerval. Once Vic has sufficiently recovered, his mind still in a tumult, he begins talking to the magistrate about the upcoming trial. Vic’s father arrives and the two have a happy reunion. Good on you Papa Frank, traveling all the way out to who knows where to see your son when he’s in a jam. Especially since the book has told us that he’s been getting up there in his age and travel may not really be for him anymore.
Vic goes to his court date and is acquitted without much fuss. A letter from the people of the island Vic was living on provides him with a solid alibi for the night of the murder. After this, Vic is released from his holding and wants to just return to Switzerland. I said earlier that Vic is still Vic, but I will say there’s a very clear shift in the man described in the earliest chapters of the book and him now. While he’s still quite dramatic and sensitive, he’s much more sickly in a physical sense. He needs to take medication to get to sleep now, he’s consumed with anxiety over Adam. It’s a rather humanizing scene of Vic just silently crying to himself on a boat one night. I feel for the guy, his life sucks at this point. He may be selfish but that doesn’t mean I wish this on him.
So Vic’s… well he’s still Vic after all this time. Upon hearing that someone’s been murdered he regards the tale with disinterest until he hears that the method of murder was strangulation. At which point, suddenly, he realizes that this could potentially be related to the guy who just left him swearing vengeance on him and his family. Is murder such a common occurrence around Vic that it only arouses interest if the method shows that it might be related?
When Vic sees Clerval’s body, well he’s not in a good way. He immediately begins shouting in French and is taken by a fever for the next two months while he lives in a cell. The local magistrate is kind enough, but rather convinced that Vic murdered Clerval. Once Vic has sufficiently recovered, his mind still in a tumult, he begins talking to the magistrate about the upcoming trial. Vic’s father arrives and the two have a happy reunion. Good on you Papa Frank, traveling all the way out to who knows where to see your son when he’s in a jam. Especially since the book has told us that he’s been getting up there in his age and travel may not really be for him anymore.
Vic goes to his court date and is acquitted without much fuss. A letter from the people of the island Vic was living on provides him with a solid alibi for the night of the murder. After this, Vic is released from his holding and wants to just return to Switzerland. I said earlier that Vic is still Vic, but I will say there’s a very clear shift in the man described in the earliest chapters of the book and him now. While he’s still quite dramatic and sensitive, he’s much more sickly in a physical sense. He needs to take medication to get to sleep now, he’s consumed with anxiety over Adam. It’s a rather humanizing scene of Vic just silently crying to himself on a boat one night. I feel for the guy, his life sucks at this point. He may be selfish but that doesn’t mean I wish this on him.
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