Synopsis

A man buys a dilapidated Manse and starts building strange machinery in it.

History

First publication: The Science Schools Journal, serialized April to June 1888

The first version of the story that became The Time Machine.

Review

Wells himself stated that he hated this version of his story and had abandoned it after three parts, so it remains incomplete. Wells had a tendency to revise much of what he wrote, including writing many versions of The Time Machine, the last version being in 1923. Mostly his constant rewriting was unnecessary, but in this case I must agree that the later Time Machine is a superior work. Even so the beginning of this with it’s mysterious stranger in an old house and the creation of bizarre machinery is very imaginative. We don’t get that part in The Time Machine.