Taking Wells Further

Hal Colebatch, Time Machine Troopers (Acashic, 2011), 172 pages, $23.99. 

A sequel to H.G. Wells’s novel The Time Machine in which the Time Traveller enlists the aid of General Baden-Powell to overthrow the domination of the cannibalistic Morlocks would seem to invite a satire lampooning imperialism and the scouting movement. In the hands of Hal Colebatch, however, we are given something far different and deeper—an unselfconscious “ripping yarn” that subverts and demolishes Wells’s nihilistic determinism while defiantly championing Baden-Powell’s character and ideals.

The unnamed narrator of Wells’s original novel tells us that the story concluded with a fictionalised account of an immediate departure, whereas in fact he has grieved for the loss of the Eloi maiden Weena before formulating a plan to travel to the year 802,719 in order to lead the Eloi in resistance to their subterranean oppressors. Such a revival of courage and initiative among this decadent race will arrest the degeneration of mankind.

Any hope of success depends upon his choice of a brave and resourceful companion, leading him to commence his journey in 1904 accompanied by the Boer War hero of the siege of Mafeking, General Robert Baden-Powell. In the hands of a lesser writer, the General’s exhortations to the child-like Eloi, “We must do our best” and “Well done that man there!” could appear comic; but Colebatch invests them with dignity and purpose. We are soon swept up in a tale of action in the tunnels beneath the ruined London of the future, leading to revelations concerning Weena and a courageous young Eloi named Afrid.

The turning point in the novel however is the realisation that the Morlocks are neither uniformly evil nor irredeemable. Led by the young Curnwal, the British Morlocks seek to preserve their scientific achievements and break free of cannibalism while resisting the truly savage Morlock invaders from across the Channel. In preparation for the ultimate battle, the time machine is used not only to transport twentieth-century weaponry, but to inculcate Afrid and Curnwal in the British history, values and traditions extant in the confident Edwardian world of 1904.

Time Machine Troopers seamlessly blends historical figures with science fiction. Winston Churchill is both a confidant and effective ally of the narrator and H.G. Wells himself is a constant foil. He is dismissed as a companion in the mission as “more use at telling adventures than living them”, lecherous and unreliable. However, Wells is shown in a more appealing light when later volunteering to join in the struggle of 802,719, with “the schoolboy sense of wonder and excitement that was the most attractive thing about him”.

The novel is a refutation of Wells’s bleak materialist vision with its socialistic warning that the Morlocks foreshadow the revenge of a brutalised proletariat who will reduce the former elites to prey animals. Rather, the Eloi and Morlocks represent the estrangement and decay of respective artistic and scientific elites. The death of religious feeling, “selfishness” in the words of the General, has caused the loss of initiative and ethics. Above all, the future is redeemable through courage, revived tradition, and religious faith—indeed, through the repudiation of twentieth-century secular progressivism.

Hal Colebatch champions a simple and basic morality, but his is no morally simplistic tale. The narrator is confronted by the old ugly truths that the newly empowered Eloi can be capable of cruelty, and that some will prefer the oppression they know rather than rise to the challenge of freedom. It remains for General Baden-Powell to re-create a framework for the growth of honour and chivalry.

Time Machine Troopers may borrow its title from the military science fiction of Robert Heinlein, but its style reflects Conan Doyle’s adventure stories without any self-conscious archaism. Film-makers in 1960 and 2002 also used Wells’s original narrative to develop a more human story, but it is Hal Colebatch who has shown real imaginative boldness to give us a gripping adventure with the strongest moral compass. 

Jeremy Buxton lives in Perth.