16 replies to this topic

[Aegist]

I was watching The Time Machine last night (see the awesome trailer here: http://video.google....earch&plindex=6, and IMDB of the 2002 version http://imdb.com/title/tt0268695/) and I had an interesting idea. It is clear that the story (by HG Wells) was written according to his perspective of the world in his time. I wonder how he would write it if he were alive today? Since we can't do that, I would be interesting hearing some ideas about how members here imagine it should end with our current knowledge?

For some perspective the story (whole text here: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/35) was written in 1895 and the travels through the future essentially come down to being a criticism of humanities constant waring. The story has the traveler remark at the change in clothing (which he watches on a mannequin in a shop front window across the road from his house), but every time he stops and gets out of his time machine, there is a war going on. In the 1960 movie they refer to the 'current' Boer War (the story is based around this happening on the 31st December 1899), and then he stops during world war one, and then during world war two where there are "flying machines" which the civilians all run from at the sound of air raid sirens which drives them into bomb shelters. As he then continues into the future past world war two (into the future of the time of the movie) they continue the same theme where a future war has an orbiting nuclear laser which blasts the city (again people are evacuating at the sound of air raid sirens).

The laser blast causes geological upheaval, he finds himself inside a mountain, so he puts it in fullspeed ahead and has to let 800,000 years pass before the mountain is eroded away and he is glad to find an 'eden'. He stops and finds a beautiful landscape full of beautiful plants all bearing perfect fruits etc. He finds a small community of humans who are clean, happy, playing by a stream with plentiful food. He finds that they are all quite 'docile' slow hardly responsive, don't care about anything, they just play and enjoy themselves. He is forced to investigate more when his machine is dragged inside a big building, and he finds that these people, the "Eloi" are in fact the 'cattle' for the "Morloks". The story is that the Morloks are the people who kept hiding in bomb shelters, and so they evolved to live in industrial style underground worlds. They don't like light, they are strong and dirty. The Eloi are the people who risked life above ground back throughout all of the air raids. Because the Morloks needed food from the surface, the morloks ensure the surface is plentiful for the eloi, providing clothes, buildings and food for them, only to then use Air Raid sirens to summon groups of eloi into their lair, where the docile eloi are eaten.

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Anyway, as I said, I wonder how people here could imagine the future. HG Wells saw a world from the perspective of perpetual war. I don't see that world now, I see a world of innovation, progress, and improved international relations.

How do you think the Time Machine should proceed past our present time into the future?

Edit by Live Forever: Fixed link

Edited by Live Forever, 17 August 2007 - 01:10 PM.

[Live Forever]

Neat idea. I see a pic of Brent Spiner (aka Data from Star Trek: TNG) on the IMDB page for the 2002 version, but he isn't listed in the credits. Does anyone know if he was he in the movie or no?

[Lazarus Long]

You may enjoy this post I made a long time ago about this subject.

http://www.imminst.o...w=pid&pid=15129

More to the point, Wells was writing the novel in a very strongly dystopic format and that aspect of his vision probably would be unchanged given that it is a core element of his thematic style. Wells was ambivalent about technology because of how it was assimilated socially, not because of a lack of possibility.

Also the TM was written about the very same subjects of Social Darwinism that we are representative of in both a positive and negative manner. Wells was what would be called an Ultra Darwinist by today's standards and fully expected eugenics to create bifurcated evolution, if he were writing today I think he would expand on that aspect and develop a more complex divergence for human evolution.

[Aegist]

Cool. but what I want to see in this thread, rather than a discussion about Wells himself, is your own version. I should really lead with my own one, but I will have to put some actual thought into it I think. I'll try to write it tomorrow (its late now)

[Lazarus Long]

I agree and understand Aegist, I was just laying out some of the framework for such a literary time machine attempt. Do you want us to write what H.G.W. would have written today, or what we would do to his core idea?

My point was that his thematic intent would probably remain unchanged and as such he would still be creating a dystopia but one that I and others already have approached through a variety of implications for competitive divergence.

I have been too busy all summer to write much but if I get a chance (after responding to Imminst business issues first) I will try and knock off a few pages for your experiment.

[Aegist]

I was thinking of what you would do with his core idea, and I didn't expect any books, but just a run down (like what I have written in the OP about his book). So basically dot point version.

[basho]

I loved that old movie as a kid! The 1995 sequel (novel, not movie), The Time Ships by British author Stephen Baxter, was also an enjoyable read. Definitely recommended. Baxter really captures the feel and style of the original.

If Wells were alive today, I imagine he would have created an even darker dystopian future. Maybe the traveler would inadvertently bring some disease with him to the future for which the pampered Eloi had lost all immunity. He would watch with growing horror as, one by one, the Eloi succumbed to a festering pestulance, suffering without comprehension until death brought a final end to the pain. The genocide delivered upon them by this demon from the past would be far, far worse than anything the Morlocks ever inflicted on the Eloi population. And with the extermination of the Eloi, so death too would come to the Morlock population. Not through disease, but a slow lingering starvation. The traveler would then come to understand the symbiotic relationship that had grown between the Morlock and Eloi species, that neither could survive without the other.

In the final days, as the last weakened Morlocks struggled to the surface to glimpse the sun, long denied to them by the cold hand of evolution, the traveler would finally gain the courage to venture into their dark realm. He would quickly find that the Morlocks had rediscovered science and were on the verge of a new age of enlightenment. The long, dark age of despair was coming to a close, but the Morlocks had awakened with the heart-wrenching realization that their binding tie to the Eloi must be broken. And so they had dedicated their community and their lives to the scientific pursuit of overcoming this nightmare of symbiosis and thereby give the Eloi a chance to lead long, full lives after so many millennia of existing as little more than cattle.

But then the architect of their extinction arrived unbidden from the past.

The traveler, in his tragic despair, would consider ending his own life. He would return to the surface and retrieve a gun he had stowed in his machine. As he held the gun up to his head and as his finger began to compress the trigger, his actions over the past weeks would replay through his mind -- two races, extinct because of him... oh why did he even build the infernal machine! Then, with this final thought, a millisecond before the trigger-pull completes, he has an epiphany! The Morlocks and the Eloi can be saved! Yes, he must die, but not here, and not now. He will travel back to the days before he had begun construction of the time-machine. He will end his life, not with a bullet through the head, but instead with a bullet through the heart of his younger, unsuspecting self.

[basho]

Well, no arguments yet about the "temporal paradox" introduced into the ending of my rewrite. The nerd-factor here has dropped to a dangerous low.

[Shannon Vyff]

basho --cool!

I'd make it more happy The traveler finds out that the Morlocks had the technology, and could advance, the technology was far advanced from his time and the travel could see how their lack of education/history held them back. The travel becomes a messiah figure, preaching about an afterlife, God, and love spirit--he explains their darwinian behavior, explains their history--utilizes this concept of a God and he as a prophet --to stimulate their technological growth. The Eloi are seen as equals, and teach the Morlocks about their basic humanity traits of empathy and love, the Eloi are brought into this technological revolution. Then of course space travel and transhumanism is ushered in, and the race can escape their planet and biological past--with the Traveler being a revered founder/prophet of the new age. (He died, and a few generations went by with the religion developing--and his teaching spreading, till the transhumism and space travel revolutions fully come about)

[soren]

There's still plenty of war afoot. - We're not out of the woods yet a while.
I recall the film of the book had a massive effect on me, as I watched it as a child at my grandparents home, which was like a museum of WWII artifacts, untainted by cleaning products or dusting... I used to sneeze myself insensible every visit come to think of it.
One thing I do note, HG Well's perfect women seems to be mute, and yielding.
Im not sure he'd be all that comfortable around empowered, dominant women we know and love today...
I might add that I'm writing a highly ludicrous novel which will set back English letters at least 100 years.
Wells would probably shoot me in the face for the ending alone.
I will never forget the film's vision of accelerated time, against the time traveler.
A great illustration of general relativity -

[basho]

basho --cool!

Thanks

... Then of course space travel and transhumanism is ushered in

Now that reminds me of an incredible time travel novel by Vernor Vinge, Marooned in Realtime (actually, the second novel in Across Realtime, a very good two-part collection which I enjoyed immensely).

The (second) novel opens with the following premise:

In the story, a device exists which can create a "bobble", a spherical stasis field in which time stands still, allowing one-way instantaneous time travel into the future. These persistent, frictionless, perfectly reflective spheres are also used as weapons, as shields against other weapons, for storage, for space travel (combined with nuclear pulse propulsion), and many other purposes.

People whose bobbles open up after a certain date in the 23rd century find the Earth completely devoid of human life. All living humans have disappeared, with only ambiguous archaeological clues for the reasons, and only those who were inside bobbles during the event survive into the future. The "low-techs" — those who were bobbled soon after the original invention of bobbles — have roughly late-20th-century technology. The "high-techs" — those who were bobbled later in time (in the period of accelerating technological progress leading up to the singularity) — have vastly superior technology, including cybernetic enhancements, faster and thought-controlled bobblers, personal automaton extensions of self, space ships, medical technology to allow immortality, and individual arsenals comparable to entire countries of the 20th century.

These few stragglers suddenly find themselves in a world where the Singularity has possibly already happened (or possibly not). And with so few people, it becomes difficult to restart a technological civilization. Forward time travel is still available via the bobble technology, so the novel quickly proceeds into the far future. One of the wonderful ideas, mentioned very briefly, is that one group of people setup cameras and record the shifting of continents and mountain ranges.

Now I must dig out some other time travel novels I have enjoyed in the past!

[Shannon Vyff]

everyone knows that going forward in time more and more-on Earth, will get you to where the Earth itself is uninhabitable though...

[basho]

everyone knows that going forward in time more and more-on Earth, will get you to where the Earth itself is uninhabitable though...

Travel backwards in time far enough and the same thing would happen.

Speaking of travel into the past... here's the most educational video ever created on this subject, and all in 50 seconds!

[soren]

Good god...

[cyborgdreamer]

I loved that old movie as a kid!  The 1995 sequel (novel, not movie), The Time Ships by British author Stephen Baxter, was also an enjoyable read.  Definitely recommended. Baxter really captures the feel and style of the original. 

If Wells were alive today, I imagine he would have created an even darker dystopian future.  Maybe the traveler would inadvertently bring some disease with him to the future for which the pampered Eloi had lost all immunity.  He would watch with growing horror as, one by one, the Eloi succumbed to a festering pestulance, suffering without comprehension until death brought a final end to the pain.  The genocide delivered upon them by this demon from the past would be far, far worse than anything the Morlocks ever inflicted on the Eloi population.  And with the extermination of the Eloi, so death too would come to the Morlock population.  Not through disease, but a slow lingering starvation.  The traveler would then come to understand the symbiotic relationship that had grown between the Morlock and Eloi species, that neither could survive without the other. 

In the final days, as the last weakened Morlocks struggled to the surface to glimpse the sun, long denied to them by the cold hand of evolution, the traveler would finally gain the courage to venture into their dark realm.  He would quickly find that the Morlocks had rediscovered science and were on the verge of a new age of enlightenment.  The long, dark age of despair was coming to a close, but the Morlocks had awakened with the heart-wrenching realization that their binding tie to the Eloi must be broken.  And so they had dedicated their community and their lives to the scientific pursuit of overcoming this nightmare of symbiosis and thereby give the Eloi a chance to lead long, full lives after so many millennia of existing as little more than cattle. 

But then the architect of their extinction arrived unbidden from the past.

The traveler, in his tragic despair, would consider ending his own life.  He would return to the surface and retrieve a gun he had stowed in his machine.  As he held the gun up to his head and as his finger began to compress the trigger, his actions over the past weeks would replay through his mind -- two races, extinct because of him... oh why did he even build the infernal machine!  Then, with this final thought, a millisecond before the trigger-pull completes, he has an epiphany!  The Morlocks and the Eloi can be saved!  Yes, he must die, but not here, and not now.  He will travel back to the days before he had begun construction of the time-machine.  He will end his life, not with a bullet through the head, but instead with a bullet through the heart of his younger, unsuspecting self.

If you're gonna invoke a paradox anyway, why doesn't he just tell his past self not to use the time machine?

[basho]

If you're gonna invoke a paradox anyway, why doesn't he just tell his past self not to use the time machine?

Its a more dramatic ending to have him become a bit deranged and kill his past self for the inadvertent crimes he committed, hoping also that he'd cease to exist. Remember, he wanted to kill himself anyway.

I remember this was covered in the South Park episode Go God Go XII where Cartman calls himself from the future and tells his past self not to freeze himself (again). Didn't work unfortunately.

I like the episode intro with Cartman falling into the future after his attempt at cryopreservation goes wrong:

[

[cyborgdreamer]

If you're gonna invoke a paradox anyway, why doesn't he just tell his past self not to use the time machine?

Its a more dramatic ending to have him become a bit deranged and kill his past self for the inadvertent crimes he committed, hoping also that he'd cease to exist. Remember, he wanted to kill himself anyway.

Well, that's true...but it's really really sad! [cry]