Book Entry · Science Fiction

The Time Ships

by Stephen Baxter · 1995

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What is The Time Ships about?

The authorised centenary sequel to The Time Machine: Wells's Traveller sets out to rescue Weena from the Morlocks and finds the future already different — his own first account, published, has changed history, and observation keeps splitting it further. Baxter sends him through a Dyson-sphere Morlock civilisation (nothing like the brutes of legend), a 1938 London at permanent war, a Palaeocene exile and the deep engineering of the multiverse itself, all in a pitch-perfect Wellsian voice that nonetheless smuggles in quantum mechanics Wells never had. Pastiche raised to the level of collaboration across a century.

Why it matters

Winner of the BSFA, Philip K. Dick and Campbell Memorial awards and a Hugo finalist — the rare sequel-by-other-hands regarded as fully worthy of its original.

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