Thursday 30 December 2010

The Time Machine Part VI

The Time Machine is a short novel, really a novelette. A 1995 Penguin edition, only 107mm x 136 mm (4 3/16 x 5 3/8 inches), is just 92 pages long. Along with its popularity, this made it an ideal novel for reprinting in the pulps - three times between 1927 and 1951. The first was Amazing Stories, May 1927. The text reprinted is the standard Heinemann published in 1895. The story illustrated on the cover is not The Time Machine. The next pulp reprints, Famous Fantastic Mysteries in August 1950 (vol. 11 no. 6) and Two Complete Science-Adventure Books Winter 1951 (vol. 1 no. 4), have The Time Machine on the cover.

The FFM cover is by Norman Saunders with the Time Traveller aggressively protecting an over sized, but nicely made-up, Weena from the Morlocks. The story is 44 pages long. The version reprinted is the uncommon first American. The TCS-AB version is the Heinemann and is 43 pages long.



2 comments:

  1. The Time Machine is short - mercifully so. I recall that as a university student I was assigned the "novelette" and Moby Dick in the very same semester.

    As I remarked at the time, there are more chapters in Moby Dick than there are pages in The Time Machine.

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  2. I like the Moby Dick/The Time Machine comparison. I'll keep that in mind when I read Moby.

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