Null

CLANET Marion
M1
Sous la direction de Jean-Pierre NAUGRETTE.
Exploring Time and Space in The Time
Machine and in The Lost World.
Paris III – Sorbonne-Nouvelle

2009-2010
Corpus:
Wells, Herbert George. The Time Machine. William Heinemann. 1895.
. The Time Machine. New York: Bantam, 2003.
Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Lost World. Hodder & Stoughton. 1912.
. The Lost World. London: Penguin Classics, 2007.
Abbreviations used:
‘TM’ for The Time Machine.
‘LW’ for The Lost World.
‘SF’ for Science Fiction.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS.......................................................................................................................3
TIME AND SPACE...............................................................................................................................8
GOING ELSEWHERE........................................................................................................................24
EXPLORING A GENRE.....................................................................................................................40
CONCLUSION....................................................................................................................................58
APPENDIX..........................................................................................................................................64
Exploring Time and Space in Wells’s The Time Machine and Doyle’s The Lost World.
INTRODUCTION
1
“Avec Wells, la SF avait trouvé son modèle de référence (…) au tournant d’un
siècle qui avait vu l’irrépressible ascension de la civilisation et celle, parallèle, de la science
et de la technologie. Tout semblait mûr pour que le seul genre littéraire qui puisait sa
problématique et ses extrapolations dans cette culture scientifique et technique (…) se
développe”1.
“Any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth,
Thickness, and—Duration... There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three
planes of Space, and a fourth, Time.” (TM 2) By conceiving time as a fourth dimension,
Wells’s Time Traveller introduces the idea that man can travel in time the same way as he has
learned to travel in space. This new idea hinges on scientific theories and paves the way for a
new kind of speculation. Indeed, time becomes an object for scientific research; and scientific
research is progressively absorbed by fiction. This is why romances such as The Time
Machine and The Lost World enable their characters and their readers to explore time and
space in several directions.
These novels were written in an ambivalent context since the Victorians were fond of
sciences, technology but also spiritualism and supernatural. Their desire to provide an
explanation for everything came with an inherent anxiety begotten by all the new theories
they had to take into account and all the new technologies they were integrating into their
everyday life. Both The Time Machine and The Lost World were published at the turn of the
century—The Time Machine was first published in 1895 and The Lost World in 1912—, they
integrated these ambiguous Victorian values, and they dealt with exploration. Yet if Wells is
now often considered a Founding Father of science fiction (S.F.), Doyle’s name appears much
less often in S.F. anthologies, even though it is commonly admitted that his Challenger series
has all the criteria of ‘speculative fiction’ and even though it has inspired many S.F. writers.
Comparing these two novels and analysing their apparition at a precise moment and place
1
Jacques Baudou, La Science-Fiction, Paris, PUF, coll.: “Que sais-je ? ”, n° 1426, 2003, p. 27.
2
enables us to explore a genre. Focusing on these two novels is also a way of proving that S.F.
novels are not necessarily deprived of any literary quality only because of their generic status.
“And there we were, the four of us, upon the dreamland, the lost world, of Maple
White.” (LW 125). Such a sentence is highly symbolical; one could even say that it works as a
metonymy for the whole novel. Indeed, this very passage is a landmark in the story, a decisive
act, since the protagonists have finally reached their destination, Maple White Land. This
sentence is literally a sign that the story is about to take place, since the Latin phrase for
‘coming to’ is ‘ad-venio’ and has produced the word ‘adventure’, so that the reader
instinctively knows what kind of literature he has to expect. Moreover, several keywords of
the novel are taken up here. Indeed, ‘there’ could refer to space, but also to time, since the
land they are entering is actually a preserved world from the past, hence the feeling of
ambiguity that pervades the text. The expression ‘lost world’ is actually used. It both refers to
the title of the novel—and draws the reader’s attention to this passage— and seems
paradoxical: how can a ‘lost world’ be discovered and desecrated by British pioneers?—or
even more simply: how can a ‘lost world’ be found? Maple White Land is also compared to a
‘dreamland’, which evokes the well-known motif of utopia while expressing the naive
optimism of the protagonists. Finally, by evoking ‘Maple White’, the narrator gives his
respects to the man who first discovered this unknown and timeless land, but he also
constructs the themes of the novel and the characteristics of the lost world. Indeed, while
‘Maple’ evokes trees and botany—and so may be an implicit allusion to natural development
and evolution—, the colour ‘White’ may suggest purity, thus reminding us that the lost world
is a virgin land, but it can also suggest colonisation. Indeed it seems that colours are blurred,
and one can wonder what whiteness is about: is it about the colour of British faces or is it
about the blank map of savage territories?
3
Thus we see that time and space, which are at the core of Doyle’s and Wells’s novels,
are literary issues. After all, novels deal with time and space all the time, and this is why we
often talk about ‘linearity’, ‘repetition’ or even ‘volume’ when we refer to them. But here we
must stop in order to precise that the ‘time’ we will be dealing with in this dissertation does
not so much refer to the experience of time, described by Augustine when he says ‘we
measure times as they are passing, by perceiving them’2, as to scientific discourses on time.
We will focus on time as an object of knowledge and which we can use for scientific
experiments. Both space and time, according to Aristotle3, deal with motion and with
localisers such as ‘before’ and ‘after’. If the main difference between exploring time and
exploring space is that time is supposed to be irreversible and to go only one way whereas
space has several cardinal points, those novels erase this difference as they offer a way to
transgress irreversibility to the readers. We realise that by transgressing time limits and
exploring year 802,701, the Time Traveller is actually bound to transgress space limits, and
his London must be geographically dissociated from the future London he discovers—if only
because time passing transforms Earth. The same can be said about The Lost World, in which
the characters transgress space limits when they explore South America, since there they
discover a prehistorical world and thus travel backward in time.
We will see that some notions imply both time and space. For instance, movement
means both the act of ‘changing the position or place of’ or ‘a change or development’4,
duration is ‘the time during which something continues’5—and thus precisely implies
movement—, and evolution is ‘the process by which different kinds of living organism are
believed to have developped from earlier forms’6.
2
Saint Augustine, Confessions of Saint Augustine , Plain Label Books, 1953, p. 272.
3
Aristotle, Physique IV, Paris, GF-Flammarion, 2000.
4
C. Soanes, A. Stevenson (eds.), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008,
p.934.
5
Aristotle, op. cit., p. 249.
6
ibid., p. 253.
4
We can illustrate this ambiguity between time and space by focusing quickly on an
excerpt from The Lost World. At the end of the novel, Malone, Challenger and their friends
witness a decisive battle in the history of humanity. Indeed, our ancestors (Indians and ape-
men) are led to fight against each other, paving the way for a new step in evolution
(APPENDIX I).
First of all, one can feel an overall sense of ambiguity between time and space with such
polysemous words as ‘present’ (l.2), ‘world’ (l.4) or ‘conquests’ (l.9-10), as these words could
either refer to something taking place at a certain time or in a certain place. Then what
Professor Challenger points out is that the characters have actually experienced the very
process of evolution through a revolution. That is to say that this single war plays the role of a
crisis in human history and opens a breach for us to actually be aware of a process we could
not be conscious of otherwise. This is why Challenger says ‘we have been privileged’ (l.1) or
refers to such events as ‘real conquests’. He argues that thanks to this journey in the lost
world, they have been able to witness one of those unique battles that matter in human
history: the battles for survival. Actually, what must be underlined is the fact that fiction
allows Challenger and his companion to share this experience with the readers. Even if The
Lost World is only a novel, it is able to conjure up ‘missing links’ of science. What takes
place is a theatrical staging of prehistory in a preserved world, so that Challenger, as both an
actor and a spectator, knows the ending of the play —since he is a palaeontologist and a
modern Englishman—, and is also able to live this ancient step of evolution from the inside.
Because the characters know how it is going to end, they have ‘faith in the end’ (l.14) and
Malone is able to assert that ‘the reign of man was assured for ever in Maple White Land’
(l.34-35). This passage is representative of the fact that the novel conveys a moral perception
of time, in other words that time is presented from a certain angle and associated to a certain
number of values. First, the facts that history repeats itself and that Challenger refers to ‘fate’
5
(l.11) rather than chance tend to prove that a determinist vision of history and time is at stake
here. Then, of course, the novel preaches Darwinian beliefs by depicting a scene in which an
exceptional battle (almost an anomaly) is actually ending a species and favouring a new one,
by means of natural selection. Finally, when Summerlee wishes to ‘go back once more to
civilisation’, it reminds us that the party first came to the land in order to inspect, observe and
study a newly discovered world. Since they have had their share of adventures and since they
have witnessed ancient forms of life, the only concern that remains for them is going back.
Moreover, the novel lauds progress, so that if the initial movement of the story is the one of
going back in time, it must necessarily end with a return back to civilisation. The Lost World
actually embodies its own theory about evolution and human progress.
What representations of time and space can we draw from The Time Machine and The
Lost World—with their differences and their common points— and, in return, how do time
and space coordinate these novels in a certain context and at the crossroads of different
genres?
First, we will see how these two novels are actually experimenting and exploring
different theories about time and space. Indeed, we may consider that time and space have
here become experimental objects for science. What general approach of time and space can
we draw from The Time Machine and The Lost World?
Then, it seems that the way these novels deal with such issues has a direct impact on
their function. Indeed, time and space seem here to construct a new or even impossible reality
and environment for mankind. How can we say that Wells’s and Doyle’s romances are
interested in going elsewhere? Is this elsewhere a utopia, an ‘Erewhon’ 7 as it has been
depicted by Butler, or simply a fictional world gathering anachronistic elements into a single
place?
7
S. Butler, Erewhon (1872), London, Penguin Classics, 1985.
6
Finally, what we will have learned about time and space by then will enable us to
suggest that genres evolve according to their temporal and spatial environment. What is the
common genealogy—the ancestors and descents— of The Time Machine and of The Lost
World?
7
PART I
TIME AND SPACE
AND
TIME IN SPACE
I 1 – Time
a) A metaphysical issue
This idea of time as something which man has learned to control as if it was external is
all the more controversial if we consider the fact that Kant defines time as “la forme du sens
interne, c’est-à-dire de l’intuition que nous avons de nous-mêmes et de notre état intérieur” 8
and not as “quelque chose qui existe en soi ou qui soit inhérent aux choses comme une
détermination objective”9. In other words, time has been given the status of a mental construct
8
Emmanuel Kant, Critique de la raison pure[1787], Paris, PUF, coll. Quadrige, 2004, p. 63.
9
ibid., p. 63.
8
during the eighteenth century whereas Wells conceives it as a relative process. Nevertheless,
time is not always reified in The Time Machine or in The Lost World; it is even turned into
something abstract. Indeed, it can be seen as something linear, something cyclical or even
something relative to one’s experience. Stephen Jay Gould makes a difference between what
he calls ‘time’s arrow’ and ‘time’s cycle’. Both these notions can apply to the novels: “At
one end of the dichotomy – I shall call it time’s arrow – history is an irreversible sequence of
unrepeatable events. Each moment occupies its own distinct position in a temporal series, and
all moments, considered in proper sequence, tell a story of linked events moving in a
direction.”10 This idea of determinism and powerlessness is taken up by the fact that history,
as it is depicted in The Lost World, seems bound to happen and by the fact that the time
machine—moving “faster and faster still” (TM 21)—suggests a car11. But, “At the other end –
I shall call it time’s cycle – events have no meaning as distinct episodes with causal impact
upon a contingent history. Fundamental states are immanent in time, always present and never
changing. Apparent motions are parts of repeating cycles, and differences of the past will be
realities of the future. Time has no direction.”12 The endings of the novels evoke such
circularity as the story begins and ends with a conference in Doyle’s novel while Wells’s
novel begins and ends in the Time Traveller’s house. According to Sylvia Hardy, time can be
seen as cyclical in The Time Machine:
“In terms of story, because the time traveller returns, after a few hours, to the place he
started from; in terms of discourse because the time traveller’s account of his journey is, in
Gérard Genette’s terms, an anachrony (an external prolepsis because the events occur at a
time in the future beyond the time limits of the framing story)”13
10
Stephen Jay Gould, Time’s arrow, time’s cycle: myth and metaphor in the discovery of geological time,
Harvard, Harvard University Press, 1987, p.10-11.
11
Sylvia Hardy, “The Time Machine and Victorian Mythology”, in G. Slusser, P. Parrinder, D. Chatelain (eds.),
H.G. Wells’s Perennial Time Machine, Athens, University of Georgia Press, 2001.
12
S.J. Gould, op. cit., p. 11.
13
Sylvia Hardy, op. cit., p. 82
9
Finally, it seems that the issue of time is directly linked with the one of experience.
Thus the characters of The Lost World perceive it as a succession of events rather than as a
succession of hours, which is why they marvel at the idea that they have spent “only one week
or so upon the top of the plateau” (LW 211). Days and nights are no longer dissociated by the
hour hand but by the fact that in both novels day is associated with exploration whereas night
inspires fear of dark creatures.
b) A narrative issue
The role of the time machine is highly interesting from a narrative point of view
because on the one hand we are able to say that the hero has survived his journey—since he
has just returned from it when he starts telling his story—but on the other hand, it suggests
that the machine still works and that anything can happen again. Thus the narrative works as
an analepsis in the same way as Poe’s « The Purloined Letter »14. Paul Ricoeur reminds us of
this complexity of narrative time when he writes “le présent de narration est compris par le
lecteur comme postérieur à l’histoire racontée, donc (…) l’histoire racontée est le passé de la
voix narrative”15. This is all the more effective here since both novels are told through a first-
person narrative and with an internal focalization, so that we are made to share the point of
view of the characters and their experience of time. In The Time Machine, an effect of
verisimilitude is produced by the presence of a first narrator with whom we are more
susceptible to identify than with the Time Traveller. In other words, the first narrator is a sort
of narrative passage to the hero’s story. As for The Lost World, its first chapters taking place
in London “servent à mettre en place l’identification du lecteur à Edward Malone et cette
dernière n’est possible qu’une fois que le narrateur accepte les thèses de Challenger".16
14
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Purloined Letter” (1844), in David Galloway (ed.), The Fall of the House of Usher and
Other Writings, London, Penguin Books, 2003.
15
Paul Ricoeur, Temps et Récit, vol. II (1884), Paris, Seuil, coll. Points, 2005, p. 186.
16
Hélène Machinal, Conan Doyle: de Sherlock Holmes au Professeur Challenger, Rennes, Presses
Universitaires de Rennes, 2004, p. 279.
10
Another noticeable narrative device—which occurs in The Lost World—is the use of
the epistolary narrative. Indeed, from the very beginning, Malone instigates a kind of pact
with Professor Challenger when the latter says “I demand (...) that nothing be actually
published until your return” (LW 72). This proves to be a narrative excuse for verisimilitude
when Malone uses it as a pretext not to precise the exact spatial situation of the lost world,
arguing “it is for this reason that I am compelled to be vague in my narrative.” (LW 85)
Actually, it also produces suspense since the narration depends on the ups and downs of
transmission. A similar effect of suspense is reinforced in The Time Machine if we consider
that the story was first serialized in The National Observer and then in The New Review
before it was published as a book, while The Lost World was serialized in The Strand.
Different kinds of storytelling take place in the novels. Indeed, the first narrator of
Wells’s romance, who is a journalist, Malone and Macdona, who writes an article about the
lost world expedition, share a professional sense of reporting events in a thrilling way; they
feel they should write sensation story and privilege suspense and action rather than
introspection and analysis. However, other views on storytelling balance this journalistic
approach. Indeed, the Time Traveller thinks of storytelling as an ancient right of telling events
in a sequence of his choosing. The more so as in the serialized edition he was constantly
interrupted while in the book the guests agree not to interrupt him. Robert Crossley also
points out that “Nearly the whole of the TM is narrated in quotation Marks so that as readers,
we are constantly aware of the fiction as purported transcript.” 17 In The Lost World, the
narration varies at several occasions since Challenger and Lord John Roxton also relate their
stories. In The Mind at the end of its tether18, Wells argues that any ‘convergence’ between
the mind and the Universe is impossible so that narratives are irrelevant. Yet, one can argue
17
Robert Crossley, “Taking it as a Story: The Beautiful Lie of The Time Machine”, in George Slusser, Patrick
Parrinder, Danielle Chatelain (eds.), op. cit., p. 16.
18
H. G. Wells, Mind at the End of its Tether, London, William Heinemann, 1945.
11
that a narrative does not need to be faithful to the universe, it rather needs to be lively, and it
seems that memory is the secret passage towards literature, that a remembered story is an
organic story (LW 227).
I 2 – Space
a) Geographical recordings : geographical recordings such as maps,
drawings or simply narration
Maps are at the core of Doyle’s works, they play a role as important in The Lost World
as in Stevenson’s Treasure Island19. This is the reason why we will exclusively focus on
Doyle’s novel here. At the first level, one must be reminded that space is to be associated with
the objects it coordinates, as pointed out by Kant who wrote “l’espace, en tant que forme pure
de toute intuition extérieure, est limité, comme condition a priori, simplement aux
phénomènes externes”20 or by A. Koyré: “nous ne percevons pas l’espace – comme on le sait,
il est inaccessible à nos sens. Nous percevons les choses dans l’espace, leurs mouvements par
rapport à d’autres choses, c’est-à-dire leurs mouvements relatifs, mais non leurs mouvements
absolus par rapport à l’espace lui-même.”21. At the second level, it is important to notice that
maps are only transcriptions of things in space, or, in Clausewitz’s words, “la carte n’est pas
le territoire”22. Thus the fact that the Indians naively depict reality through figurative drawings
instead of words tends to show that have a primitive representation of space (APPENDIX II).
19
Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island (1883), Ware, Wordsworth Classics, 1993.
20
E. Kant, op. cit., p. 63.
21
Alexandre Koyré, Du monde close à l’univers infini (1957), Raissa Tar (trans.), Paris, Gallimard, Coll. : Tel,
2007.
22
Quoted by Jean-Pierre Picot in “Cartes, Plans, Schémas, Marges et images chez Stevenson et Conan Doyle”, in
Gilles Menegaldo, Jean-Pierre Naugrette (eds.), Actes du Colloque de Cerisy. R.L. Stevenson & A. Conan Doyle.
Aventures de la fiction, Dinan, Terre de Brume, coll. Terres fantastiques, 2003, p.281.
12
The fact that they live in caves reinforce this idea of a primitive age similar to the one of the
caves in Lascaux. The Indians’ signs are “une écriture mimétique du réel, comme un missing
link (…) entre l’objet et sa symbolisation” and “Conan Doyle joue ici sur la matérialité du
croquis à la limite plus brouillon d’un écrit à venir que document cartographique rigoureux,
comme pour mieux disposer de sa référentialité supposée”23.
On the other hand, Malone’s map is inspired by the land. The map he creates is the
result of the observations he made in the tree, so that unlike the Indians, he first describes
things with language (LW 162-163) and then produces a map (APPENDIX III). This map is
not meant to be the territory, but to be its ‘geography’ (LW 160). One should also notice that
Malone failed in his attempt to produce a “carte du tendre”, his map is designed for adventure
and exploration rather than romance. Naming the lake ‘Gladys’ is in itself a subconscious sign
that he was not to consummate his marriage, otherwise the lake would have been named
‘Malone’ so that it would have symbolically joined the lovers. Finally, what is to be
highlighted is the fact that ‘Maple White’ can easily be read as ‘Map Blank’ which evokes the
white sheet that Challenger handed to his companions and that should have contained the
instructions to reach Maple White Land once in America. Finally Challenger appears in the
flesh in order to guide his friends. Thus the sheet works as a metonymy for the Maple White
Land: both are at once lost and virgin, so that everything must be explored, which is strikingly
suggestive in an imperialist context.
b) Closed worlds and open spaces
The lost world and the future London need to be open for the travellers and the readers
to reach them. In the meantime, they must paradoxically remain closed, otherwise there would
not be much interest in exploring them. Thus Maple White Land is described as a ‘vast space’
23
ibid., p. 281.
13
(LW 60) and could be seen as sacred circle in which the tree that Malone climbs represents a
cosmic axis. Yet, in chapter 9—intitled “Who Could Have Foreseen It?—, Malone relates the
event of Gomez’s treason during which the ‘half-bred’ destroyed the bridge which joined the
lost world to the civilized world. Such an incident seemed necessary a posterior, as Maple
White Land was meant to be a ‘lost world’ and a savage territory isolated from the rest of the
Earth. The same can be said about the end of the novel, when the characters have to leave the
camp and their connection with Zambo, which was the last remaining link with civilization
(LW 210). Actually, the lost world functions as an island and can be compared with The
Treasure Island24 and with Lord of the Flies25 for several reasons. First, these three worlds are
associated with an idea of self-reliance evocative of the Latin poets. Then, The Lost World
rests on the isolation of its characters on the plateau so that, as a British novel, it could evoke
insularity. The island is a limited space in which people are made to face each other and fight
for their own value: Malone stands for civilization, just as Jim or Ralph. Finally, islands are
often associated with maps—one can think about the treasure map in the chest in The
Treasure Island or about the fact that the children organize an implicit map around the beach
and the top of the volcano in Lord of the Flies—, which is also the case of Maple White Land.
According to J.P. Picot, the lost world could also be compared to a woman’s body. The
ascent would symbolically represent the quest for the feminine: “Doyle (...) va du masculin
(pinnacle of ascent) au féminin (grotte)”. J.-P. Picot even says that the LW is actually a
representation of a vagina, arguing on Malone’s obsession for Gladys’s “lips” and on the
geography of LW—which could be seen both as a mouth and as a vulva because of its oval
shape and because of the fact that the swamp is at the core of the land).26
24
R. L. Stevenson, op. cit.
25
William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954), London, Faber Paper Covered Edition, 1971.
26
JP Picot, op. cit., p. 283.
14
The places the creatures live in are very significant of their nature: the Morlocks live
underground, which is highly suggestive of both their hellish and their proletarian ancestors,
whereas the Elois live in huts like primitive creatures; the ape-men dwell in trees whereas the
Indians inhabit caves, which could be representative of the fact that the Indians have made a
step further in evolution. Maybe the worlds of The Time Machine and The Lost World are
both closed and open because they are almost living and breathing creatures, thus alternating
the moments of openness and the moments of closure like a beating heart.
c) Displacement: different means of travelling
It is interesting to notice that even though Wells’s central motif is a ‘time’ machine, its
movement is highly inspired by contemporary means of travelling in terms of spatial distance.
Indeed, the Time Traveller gets lost in time as he could have got in space; the more so as his
machine has been stolen, which inspires him disorientation. The idea of orientation in time is
taken up by the clock in the machine, which works as a compass for the Time Traveller.
Another example of the inner link between time and space when it comes to the machine is
the fact that the narrator’s machine, having been displaced in the future, is also displaced in
the present, in his room (TM 108). As for The Lost World, it rests on a more traditional sense
of travelling. What is striking is the fact that displacement is more and more primitive during
the characters’ journey to Maple White Land. Indeed, they first take the ship on sea, then
travel in canoes on streams and finally, they walk and climb.
The time machine is actually the central element of the romance, which is why it gave
both its name to the title of Wells’s novel and its identity to its main character. What is at
stake is not so much the issue of travelling than the one of investigating; otherwise it would
not have been so important whether the narrator should have travelled by means of dreams,
cryogenisation or machinery. Yet, the use of time machines is a question of symbolism in a
15
modern fable—similar to the passage from Faustus to Frankenstein—and “because they are
machines, they imply principles — even if unexplained”27. What must be added is that as soon
as principles are implied, then one can raise the issue of control over time.
In The Lost World, displacement evokes rites and transformations. The Amazonian
forest is similar to a sacred temple—a word which originates in the Latin ‘templum’ that first
referred to a special delimited place in the sky. In order to become heroes, the characters have
to find a new passage to Maple White Land, a process which is in itself a rite of passage. The
issue of passage is also present when Challenger and his companions drift on streams since
the architectural intertwinement of trees conjures up the image of a tunnel leading to light.
Finally, the characters penetrate the plateau in seven days, which is a special number in
several cultures and myths, especially in the Bible as God creates earth in seven days.
I 3 – Time as a fourth dimension of space
a) TM and the idea of fourth dimension : a history
“There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except
that our consciousness moves along it” (TM 3). Wells uses the italics to emphasize this thesis,
which is the starting point of the novel. If Bergson considers duration as an almost spatial
dimension resting on movement rather than fixed numbers28, the idea of time as a fourth
dimension is a scientific debate which is at the core of The Time Machine. This is the reason
why I will focus on this novel here while precising that most of the information needed on
27
P. Alkon, “Was the Time Machine Necessary?”, in G. Slusser, P. Parrinder, D. Chatelain (eds.), op. cit., p. 35
28
Henri Bergson, L’évolution créatrice (1941), Paris, PUF, Coll. Quadrige, 2003.
16
this issue were found in the article by W.M.S. Russell 29. The notion of a fourth dimension was
inspired by several authors, such as Aristotle and his idea of motion, which he associates to
time and space30, or d’Alembert in his Encyclopedia31(APPENDIX IV). It was suggested by
A. Möbius in 1827 and worked out by Riemann in 1854. In 1884, one year before the
publication of The Time Machine, C.H. Hinton published an essay entitled What is the Fourth
Dimension? whereas E. Abbot published Flatland, a novel which “is about a two-dimensional
world visited by a being from a mysterious third dimension” in a two dimension world.
However, it seems that the theory of relativity is the most creative and promising
association of time and space. Peter Bergmann says about Einstein’s theory that “the special
theory of relativity replaces “absolute length” and “absolute time” (...) by a new “absolute”,
often called the invariant space-time interval”32. It would be anachronistic to say that Wells
was inspired by Einstein’s ideas since the special theory of relativity was proposed by in
1905, that is to say ten years after Wells wrote The Time Machine. In 1908, according to W.
M. S. Russell, “Minkovski reformulated the special relativity theory in terms of a space-time
continuum, with time as a fourth dimension”33 and in 1922, H. Weyls summed up the
relativity theory as follows: “only the consciousness that passes on in one position of this
world experiences the detached piece which comes to meet it, and passes behind it as history,
that is a process that is going forward in time and takes place in space” 34. Although all this
extrapolation around Einstein’s theory took place long after the publication of Wells’s
romance, one could argue that The Time Machine partially announces these ideas. Indeed, the
Time Traveller’s story is probably the produce of a debate about time and fourth dimension
29
W.M.S. Russell, “Time Before and After The Time Machine”, in in G. Slusser, P. Parrinder, D. Chatelain
(eds.), op. cit.
30
Aristotle, op. cit.
31
Denis Diderot, D’Alembert (eds.), Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des
Métiers, Paris, 1751-1772.
32
Peter Bergman, The Riddle of Gravitation, London, John Murray, 1969, p. 33.
33
W.M.S. Russell, op. cit., p. 54.
34
Quoted by W.M.S. Russell, op. cit., p. 55.
17
which occurred by the end of the 1880’s. Wells wrote about it that “one or two of us
concluded definitely that this fourth dimension of the mathematicians was duration”35.
b) Light and travelling, a cinematic approach of time travelling
Gaston Bachelard reminds us that the special theory of relativity was inspired by
optics36 and Virilio writes:
“Selon lui (Einstein), la flèche du temps est une flèche de lumière et ne saurait être celle
magique de l’archer cosmique, d’où son approche d’une « optique cinématique » (…). Il ne
s’agit donc plus de compter les années ou les siècles à partir de l’alternance traditionaliste du
jour et de la nuit, il s’agit désormais de fonder « la science du temps » sur le mur de
l’accélération, ce MUR DU TEMPS-LUMIERE qui organise et « l’étendue » et « la durée »
du phénomène de vieillissement du TEMPS-MATIERE. »37
Actually, Wells’s Invisible Man is based on the idea that if one studies optics long
enough, one will be able to modify the light spectre to the point of being invisible. This plot
reinforces the idea that Wells was interested in optics. The same can be said about Doyle, who
already took it for granted in the early twentieth century that it was possible to fake a
photograph (LW 251). Yet, Wells’s idea of a time machine was contested by several S.F.
authors. Indeed, travelling in time supposes that one can create a machine the velocity of
which approaches the speed of light. This has been criticized by Paul Anderson in “Flight to
Forever” as he underlines the fact that for such an experience, the energy needed is infinite.
As for Gregory Benford, he writes in Timescape: “How do you get onto a spaceship moving
by you faster than light? The idea’s nonsense”38. Nonetheless, what is at stake in a novel is not
so much the possibility of such a time machine but the literary transcription of its
displacement, the cinematic impression created.
35
H.G. Wells, The Conquest of Time, London, Watts, 1942, p. 71.
36
Gaston Bachelard, Le nouvel esprit scientifique (1934), Paris, PUF, Coll. Quadrige, 2008.
37
Paul Virilio, La Vitesse de Libération, Paris, Galilée, 1995, p. 167.
38
Gregory Benford, Timescape, New York, Pocket Books, 1980, p. 33.
18
Indeed, the Lumière brothers first cast films on their cinematograph in 1895-1896, so
that the idea of moving images was rising by the time Wells wrote his novel, and was well
established when Doyle published his. Even painters, such as Turner39 or the Impressionists40,
wanted to represent light and movement in their art. Thus, both authors convey the impression
of movement, speed and light in their works. One of the most interesting passage of The Time
Machine when it comes to movement is the moment when the Time Traveller first uses the
machine. Wells creates the illusion of a rough and scary ride by using monosyllabs such as “I
drew a breath, set my teeth” (TM 21). He also produces an effect of stop-motion photography
by shifting different frames: first we are made to focus on the hands on the joystick, then we
are made to share the narrator’s blinded eyes which enhances the sound effects, then we are
made aware of the Time Traveller’s nausea, fear of falling and hysteria and finally we have to
focus on the Traveller lugging over the lever (TM 20-24). Thus “a series of impressions” are
used to make “the inexpressible appear tangible” so that the photographic and cinematic
aspect of the narrative turns a fantastic hypothesis into fictional experience. Another
interesting element is the fact that when the narrator returns to his time, he sees things in a
reversed order, which gives the contemporary reader the common feeling of looking at a
rewound videotape (TM 08).
As for The Lost World, it produces dramatic and cinematic effects according to
narrative devices. The space on the page devoted to description tends to slow down (pause) or
to speed up (ellipsis) our perception of time, which G. Genette calls ‘anisochronie’41. For
instance, a narrative pause is created when Malone climbs up the tree and describes the
landscape, whereas he does not relate his return journey at all.
39
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Rain, steam and speed – the great western railway, 1844, London, National
Gallery.
40
Claude Monet, La Cathédrale de Rouen. Le portail, temps gris, La Cathédrale de Rouen. Le portail vu de face,
1892, Paris, Musée d’Orsay,
41
Gérard Genette, quoted by P. Ricoeur, op. cit., p. 156.
19
I 4 – Evolution
a) A living process
According to Gillian Beer, at the end of the nineteenth century, “Everyone found
themselves living in a Darwinian world in which old assumptions had ceased to be
assumptions, could be at best beliefs, or myths, or, at worst, detritus of the past. So the
question of who read Darwin, or whether a writer had read Darwin, becomes only a fraction
of the answer”42. Hélène Machinal applies such an observation to Arthur Conan Doyle:
“Comme les récits de fiction spéculative de H.G. Wells, ceux de Doyle sont marqués par
l’ambivalence conséquente aux modifications apportées par les théories de Darwin sur la
représentation qu’a l’homme de sa place dans l’univers”43. We may argue that The Lost
World works as an initiation to evolution, enabling the reader to imagine life as it was before
man. Malone refers to Nature as a fertile force begetting life; he writes “The gulf between the
dead and the living was something which our chemistry could not as yet bridge. But there was
a higher and subtler chemistry of Nature, which, working with great forces over long epochs,
might well produce results which were impossible for us” (LW 53). Wells is also aware of
how long a process evolution represents, and this is probably why his narrator visits the year
of 802,701. The idea of evolution is also present in other wellsian works, such as The Island
of Doctor Moreau44 or The War of the Worlds45.
One could thus simplify the principles of natural selection: if we consider that all
individuals are different and that all environments are different too, then we can draw the
42
Gillian Beer, Darwin’s Plots, Great Britain, ARK edition, 1985, p. 6.
43
Hélène Machinal, op. cit., p. 301.
44
H. G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau (1891), New York, Bantam Classics, 2003.
45
H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (1998), London, Penguin Classics, 2005.
20
conclusion that those who are favoured by their environment have a greater descent and can
transmit their natural features. Actually Doyle’s novel does not fully understand or integrate
the Darwinian theories. Indeed, an impenetrable land hardly sounds possible, and birds could
always bring seeds to the lost world, which means that it would have to evolve like the rest of
the world46. Yet, The Lost World should be considered as a literary—and not scientific—
experiment made to show how ontogeny and phylogeny can work as a metonymy. Gillian
Beer explains the change in meanings of the word ‘evolution’ which occurs with Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire and Lyell47:
“During the eighteenth century, when the word was used, it meant the stages through
which a living being passes in the course of development from egg to adult. That is, it gives
an account of a single life span and remains within the pale of individual development. The
term for this in biology is ontogeny. But evolutionary theory challenged the single life span as
a sufficient model for understanding experience. In the 1830s the word evolution was used for
the first time to describe the development of the species rather than of the individual. For this
the biological term is phylogeny”48.
According to Gillian Beer, the new question of the nineteenth century was: “do we see
the phases of evolutionary process recapitulated in the individual organism?”. This could well
be Doyle’s thesis if we consider the fact that the primitive Indians are to children what the
protagonists are to adults. The Indians are similar to children because they consider that
writing cannot lie49. The Lost World is about reproducing the process of evolution in a micro
environment. The idea of progress conveyed by it might have seduced Doyle who understood
that: “Avec la théorie de l’évolution, le temps du monde vivant coule déjà en sens unique, car
une fois les êtres vivants engagés dans une certaine voie par la variation et la sélection, ils ne
peuvent revenir en arrière”50.
46
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859), Penguin Classics, 1985, p 73
47
Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Mémoire sur les sauriens de Caen, 1831 ; and Lyell, Second Volume of
Principles of Geology, 1832.
48
Gillian Beer, op. cit., p. 16.
49
J.P. Picot, op. cit.
50
François Jacob, La Logique du vivant, Tel-Gallimard, 1970, p. 195.
21
b) Progress and degeneration
Wells’s and Doyle’s novels are not only inspired by The Origin of Species, but also by
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, especially because they tackle the issue
of the ‘missing link’, “a hypothetical type between two life forms, particularly between
mankind and other primates, (which) was an immensely popular idea in the mid- and later
nineteenth century – and into our own”51. In The Time Machine, two different descendants of
man are depicted to the reader, whereas in The Lost World, two different ancestors are
presented; yet these ancestors are not supposed to have lived at the same time in history since
the ape-men should have disappeared before the arrival of Indians. The novel replaces natural
and sexual selection by a symbolic war leading to the extinction of the more primitive human
ancestors. The ape-men are actually seen as ‘missing links’ (LW 165).
The lost world is first denied the status of a civilised world, it is not even barbarian—
that is to say foreign, and perhaps less civilised— but savage—in other words, it is totally
denied the status of civilisation. This is why Summerlee eventually wishes to “get (...) back
once more to civilization” (LW 221). Then the presence of the Indians—who are at least
capable of painting and representing events (LW 224)—reproduces in the narrative the very
movement of progressive evolution, which seems optimistic. However, a certain fear of
origins remains, since if we consider that phylogeny is the mirror image of ontogeny, we have
to admit that a part of us will still be savage. This is the reason why Challenger and Malone
experience a form of regression during the final battle, as they long for massacre and
bloodshed (LW 219-220). Challenger is often animalized. He is compared to a bull, a
bullfrog, a buffalo, a bulldog. He could be compared to a Minotaur since is representative of
51
Gillian Beer, Open Fields: Science in Cultural Encounter, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 117-
118.
22
human duality52. This is emphasized by the fact that the character of the ape-men’ chief stands
for his double. Here Darwinism is so caricatured it produces comic and grotesque effects,
inspiring laughter on the one hand, empathy and disgust in the other.
“That Wells saw progress as an unceasing process of biological adaptation is clearly
evident from these two novels (The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds). The Morlocks
in The Time Machine keep and eat the degenerate Eloi, in a symbiotic relationship that
enables both subhuman species to survive53”. Indeed, Wells sent an edition of his novel to
T.H. Huxley, his teacher from Imperial College, with this note: “Je vous envoie ce petit livre
qui, je l’espère, pourrait vous intéresser. L’idée centrale – la sécurité entraîne la
dégénerescence – découle d’un certain nombre d’études biologiques”54. This idea could have
been inspired by Hegel, who thought that it was dialectical motivation such as labour or any
obstacle that enabled man to evolve55. Thus, if Wells’s Elois can be compared to
Dostoyevsky’s creatures in The Dream of a Ridiculous Man56 on the account that both are
peaceful and idle, innocence is considered as a superior value in Dostoyevsky’s short story
whereas it is associated to regression and degeneration in The Time Machine. Kirby Farrell
considers the Elois as representative of ‘neoteny’, which he defines as “an evolutionary
process in which the regulatory system retards ancestral developmental rates so that in
humans neotenates still look and act juveniles when they are reproductively adults”57.
According to Farrell, social Darwinism and Augustinian fantasies made virtues out of
“supposedly ‘adult’ traits such as competition, self-discipline, muscular strength and
52
Hélène Machinal, op. cit.
53
Jack Williamson, H. G. Wells: Critic of Progress, Baltimore, The Mirage Press, 1973, p. 97.
54
Joseph Altairac, H.G. Wells. Parcours d’une oeuvre, Amiens, Encrage Edition, 1998, p. 31.
55
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, La Philosophie de l'histoire, Myriam Bienenstock (ed.). Paris, LGF, Coll. La
Pochothèque, 2009
56
Fiodor Dostoïevski, “Le songe d’un homme ridicule” (1877), in Katia Fache, Irène Ghivasky, Martine Julien
(eds.), Nouvelles et récits russes classiques, Pocket, Coll. Langues pour tous, 2005.
57
Kirby Farrell, « Wells and Neoteny », in G. Slusser, P. Parrinder, D. Chatelain (eds.), op. cit., p. 66.
23
tenacity”. Thus women are condemned as being childish—Weena behaves like a child—while
the Morlocks evoke childish revenge. The theme of the feud is also present in The Lost World.
PARTT II
GOING ELSEWHERE
24
II 1 – Another time
What is striking about the way The Time Machine and The Lost World handle time is
that both novels are first set in a modern London, but then they are pervaded by other layers
of time, that is to say a distant future — one could almost describe it as “posthistory”— for
the former or prehistory for the latter. Although this use of time could be considered as an
anachronism, the fact that both stories attempt to justify it tends to prove that one can actually
play with history and blend epochs in fiction. What is at stake is the fact that both novels draw
all the consequences from this time shifting in order to convince us that if what they are
depicting is not real, at least it is possible.
a) Uchronia and “histoires secrètes” or the question “if”
“History begins only at the point where things go wrong; history is born only with
trouble, with perplexity, with regret. So that hard on the heels of the word Why comes the sly
and wistful If. If it had not been for… If only… Were it not… Those useless Ifs of history” 58.
Thus Graham Swift points out the human inducement to recreate history. Fiction in enthralled
by history because it provides it its raw material. As H.G. Wells put it, “truth has a way of
heaving up through the cracks of history”59. This is precisely in this temptation that the author
of uchronia indulges in according to Pierre Versins, who says that “(l’uchronie) nous est
proposée comme une tentative de recréation de l’Histoire et non comme l’Histoire elle-
58
Graham Swift, Waterland, London, Picador Edition, 1984, p. 92.
59
H.G.Wells, The Happy Turning, in G.P. Wells (ed.), The Last Books of H. G. Wells, London, The H. G. Wells
Society, 1968, p. 36.
25
même”60. Thus, uchronia and history are tightly bound although they must necessarily be
distinguished. Indeed, Uchronia does not pretend to be historiography but fiction. Eric B.
Henriet, who is one of the first critics to have specialized in the study of uchronia, defines it
as follows:
“Le terme “uchronie” est un néologisme fondé au XIXe siècle par le philosophe Charles
Renouvier s’inspirant dans sa construction du mot “utopie” (lui-même crée par Thomas More
en 1516) et juxtaposant cette fois au préfixe de négation le terme désignant le temps (chronos)
à la place de celui du lieu (topos)… Il s’agit donc d’imaginer, de manière cohérente, une
« autre » trame historique dérivant de celle de notre Histoire par un événement qui, dans la
réalité, ne s’est pas produit et de développer ensuite ce qui aurait pu se passer si…61”
Thus Renouvier’s uchronia was not about denying historical facts through historical
revisionism but it aimed at denunciating historical determinism by writing a new Roman
history, showing that things could have been different if a single element had been changed.
One could say that The Lost World is all about creating a new history, very similar to ours,
through the hypothesis of an unknown land. Indeed, the coincidence between the turning point
of history occurring in the novel when the Indians win the battle against the ape-men and the
presence of the protagonists leads us to consider that Challenger and his friends have acted
upon the very chain of history (LW 219-220). The absence of dates during almost all
Malone’s narration until chapter 16 is also significant of the fact that, on the one hand, the lost
world is a primitive land of raw danger and adventures and, on the other hand, that the author
is actually freed of historical obligations, and can unleash his imagination in a u-chronian —
timeless— world. However, we cannot say about The Lost World that is is a uchronia. Eric B.
Henriet characterizes it as “une histoire secrète”:
“Il y a également de nombreux récits supposant l’existence d’îlots ou de mondes perdus

où quelques animaux préhistoriques ont pu survivre jusqu’à notre époque, non menacés par
60
Pierre Versins, Encyclopédie de l’Utopie, des Voyages extraordinaires et de la Science fiction, Lausanne,
Editions l’Age d’Homme, 1972, p.905.
61
Eric B. Henriet, L’uchronie, Paris, Klincksieck, Coll.: 50 Questions, 2009, p. 17
26
l’évolution humaine. Qu’il s’agisse du plus célèbre d’entre eux, Le Monde perdu d’Arthur
Conan Doyle, ou encore du magnifique livre écrit et illustré par James Gurney, Dinotopia,
puis adapté avec succès pour le petit écran, il ne s’agit pas d’uchronies mais d’histoires
secrètes. Les aventuriers qui visitent ces lieux à l’écart soit n’en reviennent pas, soit manquent
cruellement de preuves à leur retour pour convaincre leurs congénères de leur existence.62”
Actually, one could retort that it is not true, that The Lost World ends with a living proof
of the existence of Maple White Land, since the pterodactyl is witnessed by a whole assembly
gathered in the Queen’s Hall in Regent Street. Yet, the consequences of Challenger’s journey
are not of paramount importance since the story is not about what will happen next. Arthur
Conan Doyle did not attempt to imagine the consequences of such news on his peers. Thus we
may consider that the theme of “histoire secrète” is a more accurate one than the one of
“uchronia”. Pierre Versins even brought up the theme of the “lost world”, as staging “les
survivants, en des lieux protégés, d’espèces autrement disparues”63. Finally, one could assert
that “Pour Conan Doyle comme pour Rosny64, il s’agit d’aller à la poursuite des mystères
encore inexplorés de notre planète; ensuite, mais ensuite seulement, nous tenterons de voir ce
qui se passe ailleurs…”65.
b) Temporal paradoxes or the consequences of time travelling
“No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie – or a prophecy. Say I dreamed in
the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have
hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its
interest. And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?” (TM 109)
The time traveller thus shows that he is aware of the fact that his story is unbelievable.
And yet, he comes back with a wonderful flower— a dried proof of his sojourn in the future
— and, above all, with an extraordinary tale. Thus he actually blends the future and his
present. As Heinlein pointed out, “Mark Twain invented the time travel story, six years later
62
Eric B. Henriet, Opus Cit., p. 113
63
P. Versins, Op. cit., p. 595.
64
J.-H. Rosny aîné, La force mystérieuse (1913), Toulouse, Ombres, 1997.
65
Jean Gattégno, La Science-Fiction, Paris, Puf, coll.: “Que sais-je ? ”, n° 1426, 1971, p. 17.
27
Wells perfected it and revealed its paradoxes”66. Indeed, even though the time traveller
witnesses the future, he is not supposed to interfere with it — after all, he is not supposed to
be here at all as he belongs to the past. Joshua Stein declares that “the greatness of Wells’s
book lies in the recognition that things only get worse the more we strive to change them (by
our very presence)”67. Yet, The Time Machine does not explore all the possibilities of time
travelling, because it is set in the future. Indeed, would the time traveller have visited the past,
his presence would have turned the tide. In Pal’s film (APPENDIX V), George – the time
traveller – is not so much concerned about social issues than about free will and about
changing the future. Obviously, we have to take into account the cultural and temporal gap
between the book and the film since the latter is set in a post Hiroshima context and its hero is
not a Londoner but an American. Yet, in the film, George’s several travels fragmentate reality
so that we realize the full consequences of time travelling. In any case, time travelling in
Wells’s novel also brings up its lot of paradoxes. The sequency-simultaneity paradox, for
instance, consists in the fact that the traveller comes back to the very moment he left. What is
striking is that the time traveller notices he has come back to the exact spatial point he has
left, but he does not notice he has also returned to the exact same time, although it seems to be
quite as much extraordinary and should not be expected. Another paradox is the fact that no
subjective time-travel is conceivable. As Robert Silverberg points out, “you can travel
anywhere in the future, but there is no way at all to get into your future or your past” 68.
Finally, two main paradoxes are at the core of SF novels, and even though they are not at
stake in The Time Machine since they tackle the issue of going backwards in time, they
should at least be swiftly mentioned. René Barjavel pointed out the “grandfather paradox” at
the end of Le voyageur imprudent as follows:
66
Robert A. Heinlein, “By His Boot Straps”, in The Menace From Earth, New York, Signet, 1959, p. 160.
67
Joshua Stein, “The Legacy of H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine”in G. Slusser, P. Parrinder, D. Chatelain (eds.),
Op. cit., p. 156.
68
Robert Silverberg, Up the Line, New York, Ballantine, 1969, p. 34.
28
“Mais si Saint-Menoux n’existe pas, s’il n’a jamais existé, il n’a pas pu tuer son
ancêtre !...
(…)
Il a tué son ancêtre ?
Donc il n’existe pas.
Donc il n’a pas tué son ancêtre.
Donc il existe.
Donc il a tué son ancêtre.
Donc il n’existe pas…”69.
Another paradox is the “predestination paradox”. Indeed, if someone brings something
from the future into the past and publicizes it, how can this thing be created? It seems that in
such a case, the thing in question has never been born to existence, it is only a copy. We can
find an example of this paradox in Behold the Man70, in which the narrator travels to the past
because he wants to assist to the crucifixion, but he finally finds out that he is supposed to
embody Jesus.
c) Representation of contemporary issues in disguise: modern London
as a source of inspiration for the novels
Even though Wells’s and Doyle’s novels are not set at the core of the turn-of-the-
century London all along the novels, they are actually concerned with their contemporary
societies and can be read as a testimony which implicitly depicts London as it was. According
to Paul Alkon, the distinction of Wells’s fiction
“was less in its prophecies than in its invitation to see life in ways unimagined by
“respectable people”. Wells offered a counterculture. Indeed his best scientific romances are
hardly concerned with prediction in any specific sense … Wells employs such more or less –
usually less – scientifically explained phenomena as a basis for looking at the present from
new angles of vision”71.
Indeed, several elements are characteristic of the end of the nineteenth century, such as
the time traveller’s clothes, the saddle in the time machine, or the contrast between the Elois
69
René Barjavel, Le voyageur imprudent (1958), Paris, Folio, 2004, p. 243-244.
70
Isaac Asimov, The End of Eternity, New York, Doubleday & Co., 1965.
71
Paul K. Alkon, Science fiction before 1900. Imagination discovers technology. Routledge, New York, 2002, p
43.
29
and the Morlocks, which could symbolize the radical difference between the Decadents and
the working class. According to Carlo Pagetti72, the fin de siècle is to be associated with a loss
of historical memories so that London appeared as a strange place then, which we can also see
in Bram Stoker’s Dracula73 or Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan”74. In fact, William
Booth conceived a utopian scheme based on a class system and thus described the Londoners:
“one a very degraded specimen with ferretlike eyes, close-set nose, more nearly
approaching the baboon than was supposed to be possible, but very human [Morlocks?]; the
other very handsome, with frank open innocent features, very prepossessing. They are quiet
and intelligent, capable of deep affection and gratitude, showing remarkable industry and
patience [Elois?]”75.
The Morlocks could also be evocative of London’s workmen, if we consider that many
of them could not stand exposition to light. Indeed,
“in 1907, W.M. Beaumont published a book on Injuries of the Eyes of the Employed
and the Workmen’s Compensation Act. Even without accidents miners were prone to
nystagmus, not identified until the 1860s. The chief symptom and physical sign of this was a
rotary oscillation of the eyeballs which prevented the miners from ‘accurately fixing anything
towards which his vision is directed’. It might involve ‘photophobic’ fear of the light”76.
Yet, class struggle was not the only mainstream idea of the nineteenth century. Indeed,
Peter Bowler77 points out that Darwinism was not then seen as the theories of natural selection
but as feeding ideas of progress whereas Wells goes counter to that idea of progress in
“Zoological Retrogression”78. Since people were obsessed with progress, the “missing link”
was all the more popular an idea, even though it was not well-understood. As Gillian Beer
points out, “Monsters and missing link are, of course, by no means necessarily the same thing
(especially since one of the characteristics of what are clinically described as monsters is the
72
Carlo Pagetti, “Change in the City: The Time Traveller’s London and the “Baseless Fabric” of this Vision”, in
G. Slusser, P. Parrinder, D. Chatelain (eds.), Op. cit.
73
Bram Stoker, Dracula[1897], Ware, Wordsworth Classics, 2000.
74
Arthur Machen, “The Great God Pan”[1890], in Late Victorian Gothic Tales, Oxford World’s Classics, 2009.
75
William Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out[1890], London, Charles Knight, 1970, p. 11.
76
Asa Briggs. Victorian Things, England, Sutton , 2003, p. 85.
77
Peter Bowler, The Invention of Progress, quoted by Sylvia Hardy, Op. cit., p. 39.
78
H.G. Wells, “Zoological Retrogression”, in The Gentleman’s Magazine/Volume 271, September 1891.
30
lack of the power to reproduce). The distinction between them was not, however, readily
apparent in nineteenth-century England before genetics”79. She also wrote
“It is no accident that the fascination with the missing link and the rise of the detective
novel occur in the same historical period. The phrase ‘the missing link’ suggests a heuristic
search, for a lost link in a chain of reasoning, as much as the search for the evidence of
physical remains. It came also rapidly to signify outlandish, monstrous creatures, as yet
undiscovered and, quite probably, fraudulent”80.
This is highly interesting if we consider that Doyle first wrote detective novels — and is
most known for his Sherlock Holmes stories — and yet that he is also the author of The Lost
World, a novel which actually depicts his vision of “the missing link”. Doyle was also
suspected to have committed the famous fraud of the “Piltdown Man”, a fake skeleton of the
so-called missing link.
Finally, the dark aspect of The Time Machine or The Lost World was probably not
fortuitous:
“Fin-de-siècle fascination with death, sin, and world-cycles pervades a good many
science-fiction novels from the turn of the century that make little or no use of the pessimistic
implications of modern science drawn by Flammarion. The Time Machine, for all its
Huxleyan biological philosophy, partakes now and again of the purely literary conventions of
la Décadence of the 1880s and 1890s”81.
Doyle is also known for having organised spiritualistic séances. He said that he saw a
man who had drowned in the Titanic accident in 1912, the year of The Lost World’s
publication. He was also probably aware of the first signs of World War One, even though it
is more obvious that he was stricken by the colonial repressed and exoticism. Indeed, the
pterodactyl, present all along the narration, does not only plays the role of a living proof for
the existence of Maple White Land, but can also be seen as a constant wild threat which is
never tamed82.
79
G. Beer, Open Fields, Op. cit. p. 123.
80
G. Beer, Open Fields, Op. cit., 118.
81
W. Warren Wagar, « Round Trips to Doomsday », in Eric S. Rabkin, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D.
Olander (ed.), The End of the world, USA, Southern Illinois University Press, 1983, p. 89
82
H. Machinal, Op. cit.
31
II 2 – Another space
“Deux formes littéraires anciennes peuvent être considérées comme des ancêtres de la
science-fiction, car elles procèdent d’une démarche créatrice assez analogue à celle de la SF et
qu’elles ont exercé une influence sur l’histoire de cette dernière. Il s’agit des voyages
imaginaires et des Utopies”83.
a) Voyages imaginaires
Hélène Machinal thus depicts The Lost World: “tout en préservant des fondements
rationnels qui sont réaffirmés tout au long du texte, [le récit] entraîne le lecteur dans un
monde merveilleusement autre et fascinant”84. This estrangement is characteristic of a genre
which anticipated on SF, fictional travels — or traveller’s tales — such as Swift’s Gulliver’s
Travels85 or Cyrano de Bergerac’s Histoire Comique des Etats et Empires de la Lune86. The
Lost World is the first novel of Doyle’s series of “lost race tales”, the most significant of
which is probably The Maracot Deep87, the subtitle of which is “The Lost World Under Sea”.
For his story to remain both extraordinary and realist, Doyle made sure that no localization of
Maple White Land appears in the text. Thus Summerlee relates their journey to the audience
“carefully withholding such information as would aid the public in any attempt to locate this
remarkable plateau” (LW 247).
Since Challenger and Summerlee, but also The Time Machine’s Time Traveller, are
transported in an unknown land and in a civilisation from another time, they cease to be
palaeontologists and become anthropologists (LW 206-207; TM 48-50). Indeed, they intend
to study an unknown’s civilisation habits and language, and this is why they have to adapt to a
83
Jacques Baudou, op. cit., p. 13.
84
H. Machinal, p. 281.
85
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels[1735],Oxford University Press, 1998.
86
Savinien de Cyrano De Bergerac, L’Autre monde[1657],Paris, Gallimard, coll. : Folio Classique, 2004.
87
A.C. Doyle, The Maracot Deep and Other Stories, Leipzig : Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1929.
32
radically different culture as Montaigne88 or Montesquieu’s Usbek89. Some elements of
Doyle’s novel are very close to ethnology’s lessons, such as the fact that the Indians’ arrows
are more effective than bullets when they have to kill a dinosaur, which reminds us of the idea
that each civilisation has its own strengths and adapts according to its environment90.
Yet Doyle’s interest in lost worlds and fictional journeys is probably more due to a
pregnant nostalgia for exploration and discovery, in a context when unknown territories
tended to disappear. Indeed, it seemed that “the big blank spaces in the map were all being
filled in, and there was no room for romance anywhere” (LW 10). In other words, the
publications of Wells’s and Doyle’s novels coincide with a regret that the traditional means of
colonisation have been exhausted; this is the reason why there is a shift from one kind of
adventures—exploration and conquest— to another—more psychic adventures. Since the
world has been physically explored, then there is nothing left for such an exploration, and
adventure should move onto new grounds. Journeys become all the more ambivalent in the
late nineteenth century, as proved by Stevenson’s An Inland Voyage91 or Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness92. It seems that the human journey which prevails above all is simply life, and life
itself becomes fictional according to The Time Machine’s narrator who reminds us that “they
say life is a dream” (TM 110).
b) Utopia, a social commentary
The Utopian could be defined as “a nonexistent society described in considerable detail
and located in time and space”93 and originally refers to Thomas More’s Utopia, which was
88
Montaigne, « Des Cannibales », Les Essais (1533-1592), Paris, Flammarion, 2008.
89
Montesquieu, Les Lettres Persanes (1721), Paris, Gallimard, 2006.
90
Claude Levi Strauss, Races et histoires (1952), Paris, Gallimard, 2007.
91
R.L. Stevenson, Inland Voyage (1878), London, Dent, New York, Dutton, 1960.
92
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902), in Youth ; Heart of darkness ; The End of the Tether, London, New
York, Penguin Books, 1995.
93
Lyman Tower Sargent, “The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited”, Utopian Studies 5, no. 1, 1-37, 1994.
33
first published in 151694. Northrop Frye classifies the Utopia among the social myths,
insisting on the fact that it deals with one’s representation of future society:
“There are two social conceptions which can be expressed only in terms of myth. One
is the social contract, which presents an account of the origins of society. The other is the
utopia, which presents an imaginative vision of the telos or end at which social life aims.
These two myths both begin in an analysis of the present, the society that confronts the
mythmaker, and they project this analysis in time or space. The contract projects it into the
past, the utopia into the future or some distant place.95”
Whereas this literary Utopian “is the verbal construction of a particular quasihuman
community where sociopolitical institutions, norms, and individual relationships are
organized according to a more perfect principle than in the author’s community, this
construction based on estrangement arising out of an alternative historical hypothesis”96, one
can also refer to Utopia, or to the “utopian impulse” as “the deeply human desire for an utterly
transformed, radically other, and/or redeemed existence, a desire that manifests itself in a
wide range of cultural documents”97. The Lost World could be compared to utopia if we
consider that the theme of regressive Utopia “groupe les notions d’Age d’Or, d’Arcadie, du
Bon Sauvage, du Pays de Cocagne et du Retour à la terre, et, en annexe, de la Fontaine de
Jouvence et tout ce genre de choses”98, and that the plateau first appears as a virgin land where
everything can happen, a “dreamland” (LW 125).
It is of paramount importance here to distinguish the “eutopian”, or “positive Utopian”
and the “dystopia” or “negative Utopian”99. Pierre Versins thus summarized this distinction:
“l’utopie, c’est le monde tel qu’on l’espère, la contre-utopie, le monde tel qu’on le craint”100.
94
Sir Thomas More, Robert M. Adams (trans. and ed.), Utopia, Second Edition, New York, London, Norton
Critical Edition, 1992.
95
Northrop Frye, “Varieties of Literary Utopias”, in Sir Thomas More, op. cit., p. 203.
96
Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: on the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre, New Haven,
Yale University Press, 1979, p. 49.
97
“Utopia”, Philip E. Wegner, in David Seed, A Companion to Science Fiction, Malden, Oxford and Victoria,
Blackwell Publishing, 2005, p. 79.
98
P. Versins, op. cit., p. 919.
99
Philip E Wegner, op. cit., p.81.
100
P. Versins, quoted by J. Baudou, in Op. cit., p. 16.
34
The Maracot Deep depicts a shift from utopian to dystopian, ending with allusion to
regressive sacrificial rites. This movement could be representative of Doyle’s moral
disappointment at the end of Victoria’s reign. Even the “dreamland” of Maple White is turned
into a “nightmare country” (LW 182). In The Time Machine, the dystopian nature of the
future is all the more prominent. “Avec Wells, la vision du future est bien plus noire. Il décrit
sa société de l’époque victorienne, qui, si elle continue, court à sa perte. Le voyage dans le
futur est ici un outils de mise en garde du lectorat”101. Wells—whose mother belonged to the
working class— aims at reforming the Victorian society by showing that class struggle could
well turn into biological enmity. Indeed, as argued by Joseph Altairac,
“La grande originalité de Wells consiste à faire glisser le statut de la différenciation

entre travailleurs et privilégiés de celui d’économique et social tel qu’il avait été décrit par
Mars, - Le Capital date de 1867 -, à celui de biologique, par l’assimilation des enseignements
de la théorie de l’évolution développée par Darwin”102.
Wells asserted that he wanted to go “counter to the placid assumption of that time that
Evolution was a pro-human force making things better and better”103. Indeed, Wells did not
think that any man could change the way of History, and even if his heroes are acutely aware
of the threatened future of man, “as individuals, Wells grew to believe, they can do little
more”104.
The Utopian is considered as an ancestor of SF and one could argue that “for every
science-fictional text is, after all, a representation of a place that is no place”105. Wells himself
is known for being “one of the few writers who have constructed both serious 106 and satirical
utopias”107 and is considered as “the first key figure in the synthesis of science fiction and the
101
E. B. Henriet, op. cit., p. 172.
102
J. Altairac, op. cit., p. 33.
103
H.G. Wells, The Scientific Romances of H.G. Wells, London, Gollancz, 1933, p. ix.
104
Alfred Borrello, H. G. Wells. Author in Agony, Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1973, p. 77.
105
Carl Freedman, Critical Theory and Science Fiction, Hanover and London, Wesleyan University Press, 2000,
p 78.
106
H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (1936), London, Penguin Books, 2005.
107
N. Frye, op. cit., p. 208.
35
literary utopia”108. He took utopian socialism very seriously, writing that “The socialist world-
state has now become a to-morrow as real as to-day”109, and made a clear difference between
his “Utopias”, which he conceived as universal and timeless, and his scientific romances,
which are anchored in reference110. Wells is “the preeminent and direct inspiration (…) for
most of the British authors who follow him in producing important science-fictional utopias:
Olaf Stapledon, C.S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Arthur C. Clarke, and others” 111 ,
but he also inspired American writers and film directors such as Anthony Burgess and Stanley
Kubrick, or Philip K. Dick and Ridley Scott (APPENDIX VI).
II 3 – the Museum
a) Museums and technical changes of the Victorian society
The Museum is an undefined space in which objects from different eras and regions of
the world are collected. In this sense, we can say that Maple White Land is a living museum.
Ruins of a museum are also depicted in The Time Machine, which reminds us of the Victorian
interest in collecting things and for new objects. This subject has been thoroughly discussed
by Asa Briggs112. According to him, “Classifying, itself controversial, was a favourite as well
as a necessary Victorian preoccupation, like naming and listing, if only because it made
‘general propositions possible’, and by identifying ‘grand divisions’ drew attention to
‘gradations’ within them”113. He devotes several chapters to the description of the Crystal
Palace, an ambitious project which yearned for universality, trying to incorporate pieces of
art, but also objects representative of the Darwinist interest in nature and zoology.
108
C. Freedman, op. cit., p. 78.
109
H.G. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography (1934), London, Jonathan Cope Paperback, 1969, p 751.
110
P Parrinder, Wells and the Aesthetics Utopia, quoted by H. Machinal, op. cit.
111
C. Freedman, op. cit., p. 82.
112
Asa Briggs, op. cit.
113
ibid., p. 37
36
“Clearly, ‘Nature’ – or at least nature morte – was not excluded from the Crystal
Palace, and a remarkable stuffed elk from the zoological museum at Turin was hailed as a
model of ‘the art of representing the living animal’. Nor was animal nature, sentimentalised as
it so often was, the only kind of nature on display”114.
Technical changes have also been radical thanks to the industrial revolution so that
people’s point of view about time, space, or displacement evolved. W.T. Stead explained that
“The great triumph of the 19th century has been the subjection of time and space by the mind
of man” and Asa Briggs thus clarifies his sentence: “the telephone, following in the wake of
the telegraph (…) has annihilated distance, just as the phonograph has annihilated time” 115,
electricity ‘could govern time simultaneously in hundreds of clocks, ringing chimes in bells
and in kitchens, and measuring space as it was ‘traversed by the railway train or the
steamship’”116. Time became more and more standardized and in 1884, Greenwich became
the reference point.
New means of travelling had begun to develop: trains, motorcycle or bicycles. Bicycle
was very popular, “There was a sense that the man on the bicycle was not just a man and a
machine, he became ‘a faster man’, rather than ‘two different things like man and horse’” 117.
This view on cycles conjures up the image of the time machine, the saddle of which was thus
evocative of a contemporary image in 1895. As Asa Briggs points out, “H.G. Wells
introduced flying machines into his stories. Meanwhile, however, he was cycling on Britain’s
rough national highway – and local tracks”118. Another technical invention may have inspired
Wells’s idea that a part of humanity, the future Morlocks, may have to live underground.
“London has developed its underground system since the 1860s. ‘As aerial navigation is not
114
ibid., p. 39
115
ibid., p. 352
116
ibid., p.362
117
Asa Briggs, op. cit., p. 371.
118
ibid., p. 371.
37
yet an accomplished fact’, wrote the London Magazine, ‘the only alternative left to us is to
burrow under the earth like rabbit”119.
As for the photograph and the cinema—described as “the biggest of all technical
changes”120—, for the first time it enabled people to keep an image of past events, reflecting
the Victorian passion for collecting objects and memories.
“Many people in the mid-Victorian years, including Queen Victoria herself, had kept
photographs not only on the walls or on the tops of tables and desks but on screens. There
were many screens in the home, therefore, before there were screens in the cinema or screens
in the home again in the days of television”121.
Yet, we have to remember that novelty also brings its share of fears and anxieties, so
that all this technique may also have caused the sense of pessimism which pervades many
novels during the turn of the century. “For some people the invasion of new things into the
home as well as into the factory carried with it an element of threat. For more people there
was a sense that new things upset old ways.122”
b) The Museum in The Time Machine and in The Lost World as the deposit
of time
When McArdle introduces Challenger in chapter two of The Lost World, he gives both
Malone and the reader the information that Challenger has worked in the British Museum, so
that we know Challenger is interested in collections, in preserved objects. This is the reason
why he has organised the expedition to Maple White Land. Indeed, he is very aware that the
lost world is a living museum of the Mesozoic, and even provides a geological explanation for
the fact that it has been perfectly preserved (LW 44). Thus, the plateau appears like a natural
history museum in which species have not disappeared but are still living. At the end of the
119
ibid., p. 374.
120
ibid., p. 115.
121
ibid., p. 116.
122
ibid., p. 331.
38
novel, Challenger wants to use his part of the treasure building a private museum, which
shows that being a curator is his particular ambition. The ruined photographs he brought from
his first expedition are significant of his desire to collect, which is mainly due to scientific
motives. In The Maracot Deep, the city under the sea is also a preserved ancient land, a living
museum, and ancient images are collected thanks to a system of mental projection on a
screen, very similar to cinema. Moreover, Baal’s temple is also called “the Palace of Black
Marble”, which clearly recalls Wells’s “Palace of Green Porcelain”. Doyle also wrote at least
two short stories which take place in museums: “The Jew”s Breastplate”, in Belmore Street
Museum, and “The Ring of Thot”, in the Louvre, in which the museum symbolizes survival
throughout the ages.
In chapter eight of The Time Machine, the time traveller visits the ruins of a museum in
the Palace of Green Porcelain, but he cannot draw much information about what happened
from it. Indeed, the world of the future seems not to have any surviving written records:
history in its historiographical sense has ceased to exist. The museum is a memento mori
addressed to humanity. Even when an inscription remains on the frontispiece of the Palace of
Green Porcelain, Weena cannot read it123:
“Ironically this view backward from a remote future does not tell us anything about our
own immediate future, which is thus in a peculiar sense forgotten before it takes place. The
Time Traveller’s tour of this museum invites us to consider our present and future as a lost
past that finally has not mattered.124”
123
Sylvia Hardy, op. cit.
124
P. Alkon, op. cit., p 52.
39
PART III
EXPLORING A GENRE
40
III 1 – Founding and exploring a genre: a historical
context
a) Defining Science Fiction
Attempting to define SF raises the issue of genres. Indeed, as it has often been pointed
out, a clear-cut definition of SF hardly sounds possible, because this subgenre of the novel
includes many books which are as different in their themes as in their style and can even
apply to films.
“Because science fiction is so protean, every definition seems to cover only one aspect
of its nature. Thus is has been called a literature of ideas or the literature of anticipation or the
literature of change. It could also be defined as the literature that concerns itself with the
condition and fate of the human species”125.
Science fiction is also often called “speculative fiction”, so that “S.F.” actually refers to
both words and ideas; the first laying insistence on the theme of science and technology while
125
James Gunn (ed.), The Road to Science Fiction, from Wells to Heinlein (Vol. 2), Lanham, Maryland, and
Oxford, The Scarecrow Press, 2002, p. xi.
41
the other insists on the mental process involved in writing such books. Hence Bozzetto’s
definition of SF as :
“un récit de voyage dans l’imaginaire, mais ce récit est fondé sur la nécessité d’une
consistance référentielle de type analogique appuyée sur des conjectures qui varient en
fonction du savoir scientifique, sans en être prisonnier et qui prend en compte l’anticipation et
s’appuie sur des extrapolations techniques. Sa visée propre est la création d’un monde du si –
la variante prenant appui sur un savoir éventuel autre que les idées dominantes sur la réalité
empirique.126”
Actually, even the origins of SF are problematic and are discussed by specialized critics.
For some of them, Ezekiel would have described a flying machine in his vision of God’s
chariot127; others consider that Plato’s tale of the Atlantis is a SF story—the more so as it has
inspired authors like Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle and many other SF writers, from Edgar
Rice Burroughs128 to Robert Silverberg129. For Arthur C. Clarke, SF begins with The Odyssey,
whereas for Pierre Versins130, it begins with the Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2nd millennium BC).
Yet by considering that myths and SF are actually two different genres, we have to agree with
Mark Rose when he says that SF is a specifically modern form of romance—even if we can
discuss the fact that it should begin with Verne and Wells since certain critics consider Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein131 as the first novel of science fiction.
As for the name of “science fiction”, it first appeared in the editorial of Science Wonder
Stories, a pulp magazine created by Hugo Gernsback at the end of the 1920’s. “le mot SF était
né, mais il désignait un genre qui lui préexistait. Ainsi Amazing Stories publia, pendant les
premiers temps de son existence, de nombreux textes de Jules Verne, d’H.G. Wells et de E.A.
Poe”132. Thus, while Hugo Gernsback, talks of “scientifiction” in the inaugural issue of
126
R. Bozzetto, L’obscur objet d’un savoir, Aix-en-Provence, PU de Provence, 1992, p. 45.
127
Book of Ezekiel, 1: 1-3.
128
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Jewels of Opar (1916), London, New English Library, 1968.
129
R. Silverberg, Letters from Atlantis, in Cronos (1990), London, Simon and Schuster, 2001.
130
P. Versins, op. cit.
131
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818), London, Penguin Books, 1994.
132
J. Baudou, op. cit., p. 4.
42
Amazing Stories in 1926, H. G. Wells said he wrote “scientific romances”, J.H. Rosny Aîné
talked about “le merveilleux fantastique”, J. Verne wrote “voyages extraordinaires”, and E. A.
Poe, “ratiocination”133. But what prevailed in early SF writings probably was the encounter of
scientific interest and fiction of the nineteenth century: “apparently the age of romance was
not dead, and there was common ground upon which the wildest imaginings of the novelist
could meet the actual scientific investigations of the searcher for truth” (LW 246).
b) Exploring science rather than using it
At the end of the 19th century, literature gets interested in science. In Literature,
Technology, and Modernity, 1860-2000, Nicholas Daly “wants to suggest that literature and
film are actually involved in modernization rather than mirroring it”134. Wells found
inspiration in this new industrial and technological era.
He “saw science and technology becoming central facts in people’s everyday lives, and
he began to think of humanity as a species, even as a species whose survival was uncertain.
His inquiring mind and his art assembled the various elements of a new fiction out of earlier
fragments. For good reason Wells is called the father of modern science fiction”135.
The Professor Challenger embodies the Victorian obsession with science. He is
compared to “a Colombus of science” (LW 43), he also compares himself to Galileo or
Darwin (LW 59) and refers to Weismann, Wallace or Bates. He is the man of science who is
able to decipher signs thanks to his encyclopedic knowledge. The precision of instruction
given by Challenger to his friends is evocative of J. Verne’s novel, Le Tour du monde en
quatre-vingt jours, and of his main character, Phileas Fogg136. Study and science are objects of
133
George Slusser, “The origins of Science Fiction”, in David Seed, A Companion to Science Fiction, op. cit.,
p.27.
134
Nicholas Daly, Literature, Technology, and Modernity, 1860-2000 , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
2009, p. 2.
135
J. Gunn, op. cit., p ix.
136
J. Verne, Le tour du monde en 80 jours (1872), Paris, Editions Flammarion, 2004.
43
pride in The Lost World, which accounts for Challenger’s will to build a private museum and
Summerlee’s desire to own a collection of fossils and classify them (LW 263).
The time traveller and Professor Challenger tread on the footsteps of famous scientists.
They inscribe themselves in a Cartesian tradition. Indeed, the traveller makes several
comments about truth judgments such as “it was really obvious but absolutely wrong” (TM
48), thus inheriting his scientific method from the Cartesian rule of defiance before
simplicity137. Challenger takes exactly the same position when he demands to Malone to
“cease to make assertions which are not in strict accordance with scientific fact” (LW 55).
Science is deified, as it has been during the nineteenth century, which has given birth to the
positivist theories of Comte but also to the evolutionist theories of Darwin. Indeed, if
Challenger pretends to be a rival of Weismann, both scientists recognize Darwin’s principles.
However, science is not necessarily considered salutary. The Time Machine works as a
parable about science and knowledge. On the one hand, scientific knowledge is not power,
and if science is not at the origins of difficulties, it may still destroy happiness by revealing
more problems than it can solve. Thus, by discovering the future of humanity, the Time
Traveller actually endorses a kind of responsibility towards mankind. On the other hand,
ignorance is neither bliss nor strength as illustrated by the Elois’ condition138. The Lost World
is also highly critical of technology, even if it is for another reason. Science as something
inaccessible because it is put on a pedestal is rejected. Indeed, it must constantly be reminded
of its function, which consists in preserving nature and a spiritual balance in existence. This is
why Doyle denunciates the materialist position of science, making his Rabelais’s proverb,
“science sans conscience n’est que ruine de l’âme”139. According to his narratives, the more
moral is taken into account, the more science shows his negative side. Yet one must
137
René Descartes, Discours de la méthode (1637), Paris, Gallimard, 2009.
138
P. Alkon, “Was the Time Machine Necessary ?”, in G. Slusser, P. Parrinder, D. Chatelain (eds.), op. cit.
139
Rabelais, Pantagruel, Paris, Gallimard, 2006, chap. 8.
44
distinguish two different types of sciences in The Lost World, the one pervading academic
research being senile, sterile and ridiculous while the other, being an assess for exploration
and study, is associated to progress.
Finally, and in spite of the undeniable impact technology had on Wells and Doyle,
science is not the most important element of their novels. Indeed, imagination and ideology
remain the most basic and essential elements of those romances. According to Hélène
Machinal, they are clearly inspired from “les origines utopiques du genre où la science ne
jouait aucun rôle”140. The SF reader is remembered that “ce qui compte dans un bon roman de
Science-Fiction, ce n’est, en vérité, ni la science ni la fiction : c’est l’hypothèse
philosophique”141.
III 2 – A literary heritage
a) From M. Shelley and J. Verne to H.G. Wells: a decisive step
Mary Shelley and Jules Verne have definitely had a great influence on SF writers.
Even in The Lost World there seems to be a reference to Frankenstein. Indeed, both novels
situate life at the core of their interests. While Mary Shelley’s novel focuses on ontology, on
creating man as an individual, and thus reasons in terms of artificial monsters, Doyle’s novel
tries to conjure up the whole process of evolution, and thus considers mankind as a natural
species among others.
“(Frankenstein) suggests, even, in the figure of the monster made out of men to look
like a man, that ‘organic form’ may itself be no more than a simulacrum of life if it does not
140
Hélène Machinal, op. cit., p 267.
141
Curtis, Un saint au néon, quoted in Christian Grenier, La Science-Fiction, lecture d’avenir?, Nancy, Presses
Universitaires de Nancy, 1994, p. 9.
45
allow full recourse to those secret, pre-conscious and beyond consciousness experiences of
growth which are the full conditions of creativity”142.
Nevertheless, both novels are fables which rest on the idea that even modern man’s
technology cannot bring life, or enable us to reach a more enlighted kind of life — we can
also find this theme in A. Machen’s “The Great God Pan”143 or in H.G. Wells’s The Island of
Doctor Moreau144 . During his lecture, Challenger recalls that “the gulf between the dead and
the living was something which our chemistry could not as yet bridge” (LW 53).
The Lost World clearly found inspiration in Verne’s works. Thus, Challenger intends to
build a gas balloon to leave Maple White Land (LW 232). Doyle was also inspired by other
inventions which are central in Verne’s “voyages extraordinaires”, such as the submarine in
Maracot Deep, in which we can see a reference to Vingt Mille Lieux sous les Mers145. J. P.
Picot says about The Lost World that it is a “réecriture “à darwinisme ajouté” du Voyage au
centre de la terre”146. Jules Verne also echoes H.G. Wells, since both were interested in new
means of travelling and in technology in general. Yet, Jules Verne aimed at a young audience,
as opposed to Wells who was more interested in an adult audience. Their main difference is
that “Verne utilise la science – ou plus précisément, la technologie – pour l’exploration
géographique du monde de son temps, alors que Wells utilise la science elle-même » ; as a
result, in 1889, Oscar Wilde said that Wells was a « scientific Jules Verne »147.
Critics argue on the issue of knowing who first wrote a SF novel. According to Jean
Gattégno, “chronologiquement, Jules Verne a fondé l’anticipation scientifique ; en fait, c’est
plutôt de Wells que toute la SF actuelle procède”148, “là où Jules Verne se contentait, en
142
G. Beer, Darwin’s Plots, op. cit., p. 111.
143
A. Machen, The Great God Pan, op. cit.
144
H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau, op. cit.
145
Jules Verne, 20 000 lieux sous les mers (1869), Paris, Garnier-Flammarion, 2005.
146
J.P. Picot, op. cit., p. 275.
147
Joseph Altairac, op. cit., p. 27.
148
J. Gattégno, op. cit., p. 9.
46
somme, de prolonger le roman d’aventures, Wells a fondé l’anticipation scientifique. La SF
date de 1895”149. According to Paul Alkon150, SF starts with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In
1818, Percy Shelley wrote a preface for his wife’s novel, as though it was written by her,
distinguishing her work from gothic fiction: “I have not considered myself as merely weaving
a series of supernatural terrors. The event on which the interest of the story depends is exempt
from the disadvantages of a mere tale of specters and enchantment” 151. On the contrary, the
1831 edition’s preface insists on the gothic desire to “awaken thrilling horror”152. Finally, it
seems that Wells is the first author to have written pure science fiction while Shelley hesitated
between the Gothic, and what we now call speculative fiction — or the desire to establish her
story upon scientific plausibility—, and while Verne hesitated between adventure —
exploration, danger and suspense — and SF.
b) Wells’s machine
“Nul n’ignore que cette invention a été attribuée à WELLS dont La machine à
explorer le temps est un classique. Pour la première fois, si l’idée que le temps n’est pas
inaltérable existait depuis longtemps, un écrivain fait voyager son héros vers l’avenir, puis
vers le passé, à l’aide d’une machine”153.
The issue of travelling in a time machine — rather than by magic or dream — begets
symbolism through a fable about science, like the passage from Faustus to Frankenstein for
instance. “The presence of the machine, the symbol of science and rationality, points to the
fable’s central concern with power: through science, man may be able to dominate time. But
what the novel finally reveals is that any such hope is false: not man but time is the master of
the universe”154. Thus what is at stake is not only time travelling but investigating time, the
149
ibid., p. 15.
150
P. Alkon, Science fiction before 1900, op. cit., p. 1.
151
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, op. cit., p. 11.
152
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, op. cit., p. 7.
153
P. Versins, op. cit., p. 667.
154
Mark Rose, Alien Ecounters: Anatomy of Science Fiction, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press,
1991, p. 101
47
more so as time travelling is not a ground-breaking idea considering that a few years before
Wells wrote The Time Machine, Mark Twain155 published his A Connecticut Yankee in King
Arthur’s Court156.
By avoiding a detailed description of the time machine, Wells invites the reader to an
active interpretation rather than passive engagement. His motto seems to be “concision rather
than expansion. The fact that the time machine has a double emphasizes on it”157 since his
prototype is a miniature time machine. Wells clearly distinguishes himself from Jules Verne
with this invention. Indeed,
“This imaginative exercise had little in common with Jules Verne’s modest
extrapolations of locomotive technology, as Verne was quick to recognize and complain, but
Wells had not taken the trouble to make his time machine seem plausible to sympathetic
readers because he expected them to take the notion seriously as an actual possibility; he
knew how necessary some such device had become as a means of opening the future to
serious speculative scrutiny”158.
Thus what is of decisive importance in The Time Machine is the fact that the
explanations for the machine may be dismissed as a scientific patter, but it is highly
interesting as “a literary convention initiated by Wells and indispensable to later science
fiction”. On the one hand, we are led to “assume it is operating on some rational principle
derived from science”; on the other hand, “the time machine serves as a means of conveying
us imaginatively to otherwise unattainable situations that are connected in one way or another
with real science, not pseudophysics”159. Thus it brings together science and fiction,
plausibility and raw imagination.
“Wells’s “invention” of a physical time machine is at one and the same time a natural
extension of a moon rocket and a device that effects a mini paradigm shift in terms of
155
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889). Mineola (N.Y.), Dover, 2001.
156
P. Alkon, “Was the Time Machine Necessary?”, op. cit.
157
ibid., p. 29.
158
Brian Stableford, “Science fiction before the genre”, in Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (eds.), The
Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 24.
159
P. Alkon, Science fiction before 1900, op. cit., p. 49.
48
conventional limits of the travel and historical narratives. For, thanks to the physical powers
of the machine, Wells is able in a stroke of genius to connect these two forms of narrative. In
doing so he creates a viable prototype for the SF novel”160.
Some physicists tried to conceive such a machine. Alfred Jarry published a
“commentaire pour server à la construction pratique de la machine à explorer le temps” 161,
according to which the construction of a time machine rested on the idea of ether. However,
Friedell162 completely dismissed the mere perspective of building such a machine, pointing
out that it raised too many paradoxes. Nonetheless, Wells’s invention was not lost among
writers, as it clearly inspired many of them. As for Doyle, he was probably one of the first
authors to situate his narrative among dinosaurs, a trend which has been taken up in many
novels of science fiction.
III 3 – The Origins of a genre
a) Great expectations or popular culture?
By reading The Time Machine and The Lost World, one can marvel at the number of
works and genres the novels take inspiration from. Such an observation might lead to wonder
whether they are addressed to a young or adult audience, popular or well-read readers. Indeed,
one can argue that those texts — as well as other SF writings — are related to the popular
genres of fairytales and fables, as does Jean Fabre who says that speculative fiction “se nourrit
d’idées donc de morale et penche toujours du coté de la fable”163. Thus The Lost World ends
with two necessary themes of the fairytale: on the one hand, Challenger’s quest is resolved
and he has even found a treasure to crown his success (LW 262); on the other hand, each
160
George Slusser, “The origins of Science Fiction”, op. cit., p. 40.
161
Jarry, “Commentaire pour server à la Construction Pratique de la Machine à explorer le Temps”, in Gestes et
Opinions du Docteur Faustroll, Pataphysicien (1900), Paris, Ed. Cartouche, 2004.
162
Friedell, The return of the Time Machine (1972), London, DAW Books, 1983.
163
Jean Fabre, Le Miroir de la sorcière, essai sur la littérature fantastique, Paris, José Corti, 1992, p. 174.
49
character seems to have been changed by experience and become “a better and deeper man”
(LW 241). As for The Time Machine, it can almost be read as a medieval tale of chivalry, the
Palace of Green Porcelain evoking an enchanted castle, while the traveller comes to Weena’s
rescue as if she was some sort of Princess.
Yet, Wells and Doyle were also clearly inspired by another genre, the myth, which is at
once closely related to the tale and a Homeric, noble heritage. Thus, Malone compares a
pterodactyl to a harpy, mentioning Virgil (LW 116), while the time traveller first sets eyes on
a white Sphinx (TM 24). This Sphinx seems to convey the idea of a cyclical view of time, in
which what is to come is the same as what we already know; it does not only asks riddles but
embodies one. The Time Machine takes up several myths164, such as the Arthurian romance —
since it depicts a lone visitant struggling against forces of darkness —, the Descent into the
well or voyage to the abyss of the underworld — which echoes the myths of Psyche and
Cupid, Ulysses, Aeneas but also Dante’s Inferno or Alice in Wonderland —, or the Golden
Age — although the Elois’ fate is in sheer contrast with the Greek or Roman myth. Bernard
Bergonzi suggests that the word ‘myth’ has a “peculiar applicancy to Wells’s romances”
because they “possess a wide relevance but nevertheless have a particular historical point of
departure”165 while Sylvia Hardy recalls the fact that mythography played a major role in the
second part of the 20th century because of the current obsession with origins.
The Lost World also pledges allegiance to the genres of travel diaries and epistolary
fiction as Challenger demands “that nothing be actually published until (Malone’s) return”
(LW 72). Hence the dramatic writing of the novel, since Malone and Macdona, who relates
the last chapter of the novel, are both journalists, so that the narrative has something to do
with sensational press and installments. The more so as a “full account of the whole
164
J.R. Hammond, “The Time Machine as a First Novel”, in G. Slusser, P. Parrinder, D. Chatelain (eds.), Op. cit.
165
B. Bergonzi, The Early H.G. Wells: a Study of the Scientific Romances, Manchester, Manchester University
Press, 1961, p. 19.
50
adventures of the expedition”, which refers to Malone’s narrative, is “published as a
supplement” (LW 247). The fact that stress is laid on dramatic effect is a common feature of
popular fiction, the more so as Challenger planned his move when he decided to reveal his
captured pterodactyl to the audience, but also to the reader, producing a real coup de théâtre.
Elements of popular genres can be found in the traveller’s and Malone’s narratives. The
sixth chapter of The Time Machine in which the traveller descends into the well is related to
horror fiction, as it may call to mind Bosch’s paintings, and as tactile sensations reinforced by
darkness enhance the feeling of thrill and fear. As for Challenger’s ingenuity and scientific —
if not medical — knowledge, they are also features of Holmes’s personality, so that they bring
together Doyle’s detective novels and his speculative fiction. The Lost World, being a
succession of events, also openly claims its relation to adventure fiction as its ending
eulogizes the values of comradeship and adventure rather than love. Indeed, if the narrative
begins as a romance — the quest for adventure is a quest for Gladys’s heart at first —
Gladys’s name only reappears in chapter 11 so that we know it is not one. We also finally
learn that Gladys married when Malone had left which leads us to understand that what is
important was not this absurd love story but the impulse it had on Malone.
Thus it seems that The Lost World and The Time Machine are lined up with popular
fiction; “il s’agit bien de romans “populaires”, de récits “d’aventures” : en les appelant
scientific romances, Wells renoue avec la tradition du roman populaire (sentimental ou
féerique) le plus accessible au grand public”166. However, Challenger refuses to use an
inaccurate language only because it is difficult to understand for people; and if his lectures are
popular, they are not demagogic. This tends to indicate that popular fiction should not
necessarily be opposed to “general literature”. According to Caldwell167, Wells proceeds in
the same way as postmodernists such as Nietzsche, Barthes or Foucault and tries to
166
Jean Gattégno, La Science-Fiction, op. cit., p. 14.
167
L.W. Caldwell, “Time at the End of Its Tether”, in G. Slusser, P. Parrinder, D. Chatelain (eds.), op. cit.
51
commingle two opposite narrative compulsion; the first one being a realist compulsion with
an authoritative closure and a fusion of the narrative voice and a moral voice, whereas the
second one would be a modernist compulsion, dealing with technical temptation and the lack
of reliability of the traveller, even though he pretends to embody moral values.
b) Mysteries of Science Fiction
What is at stake here is the fact that the mode of reality noticeably partakes in the
definition of the genre of SF. First of all, because fiction in general deals with lying; which is
why “Wells has set up the tale so that the truths exposed in TM – truths about progress, about
class, about mortality – come packaged in “the lie of fiction”” 168. Through time travel, Wells
actually puts in evidence the very process of literature; he “discloses for us the rank
artificiality, the arbitrariness, the dirty secret of all our storytelling: narratives are construct
that work against themselves, denuding our predisposition to order yet confounding our
impulse to comprehend”169.
Yet, Wells and Doyle also produce another kind of lie in their works. Indeed, the lost
world could be defined as a special place which differs from the fantastic. This special place
takes the shape of a “monde autre et homogène”170 evolving in parallel of our own world. As
opposed to the fantastic, the order set up by the story does not debunk the first order or our
own. However, the uncanny pervades the text through the themes of exoticism, past or
animality. But SF clearly is not the same as the fantastic. If spiritualism and occultism are
latent in Doyle’s Maracot Deep and confirm his reaction against positivism, his characters’
discourses — as Wells’ — are always rational and scientific. Doyle wants his story to sound
real, but also topical, which accounts for his mention of Weismann’s name. According to
168
R. Crossley, “Taking it as a Story”, op. cit., p. 17.
169
L.W. Caldwell, “Time at the End of Its Tether”, op. cit., p. 141.
170
H. Machinal, op. cit., p. 267.
52
Hélène Machinal, “Le cadre de la légalité quotidienne mis en place, l’inadmissible peut
surgir”. But if in fantastic fiction the characters have to face an invasion of the supernatural,
whereas in SF, they willingly choose to land here; “ce sont les explorateurs qui envahissent le
monde perdu ”171. In other words, SF belongs to the “‘littératures de l’imaginaires’ (…) qui
ont pris la liberté de s’émanciper du monde physique dans lequel nous vivons”. And yet, it
must be distinguished from fantastic or fantasy fiction because “la SF doit s’appuyer, elle, sur
une base rationnelle, scientifique ou d’apparence scientifique, avant de développer ses
extrapolations”172. This characteristic enables Christian Grenier to define science fiction
according to three criteria related to the mode of reality: first, a clear announce of the
discrepancy between the reality of the text and ours or “décalage avec le réel”173, then a
pregnant logic and coherence in the succession of events174, and finally a strong will to make
the story sound the more plausible or realist possible or “l’ambiance ou le style réaliste”175.
c) A genealogy of The Time Machine and The Lost World
“Un nouveau genre est toujours la transformation d’un ou de plusieurs genres anciens :
par inversion, par déplacement, par combinaison”176. If we consider that Wells is probably the
founding father of SF, we should also admit that his work is fraught with elements from other
genres. It seems that Wells was “disinterested in such questions”, that he “never denied nor
affirmed that he had been inspired by these (Swift, Verne, Poe) and other authors, nor did he
ever claim originality for his short stories or for any of the writing he had done”177. However,
it is undeniable that Wells’s and Doyle’s speculative fiction absorbed other genres. We could
compare the apparition of this new genre to the birth of a new species which inherits a certain
171
H. Machinal, op. cit., p. 267.
172
J. Baudou, op. cit., p. 6.
173
C. Grenier, op. cit., p. 113.
174
ibid., p. 114.
175
ibid., p. 115.
176
T. Todorov, Les genres du discours, Paris, Le seuil, coll. Points, 1970, p. 47.
177
A. Borrello, op. cit., p. 71.
53
number of features from its ancestors. Thus we can classify genres or literary trends in a
genealogical tree revolving around both our novels in order to make its lineage really explicit
(APPENDIX VIII). We will now comment upon this filiation by focusing on a few themes
and works related to Doyle’s and Wells’s novels.
Ian Duncan178 relates The Lost World to Milton’s Paradise Lost which we could also
connect to The Time Machine since all those novels illustrate the way man spoils the pure and
virgin land which has been bestowed to him, thus cursing himself. Indeed, while myths are
often tales of Origins, the Apocalypse, or Revelation, deals with the future of humanity. This
is probably why fiction in which time plays a predominant role embraces both eschatolologic
myths and apocalyptic visions. Then, as we already saw, SF is closely linked to fictional
travels — such as those which have been collected by Charles Garnier in 1787 in “Voyages
imaginaires, songes, visions et romans cabalistiques” —, utopias and dystopias, which were
very numerous in the twentieth century. We should mention Fritz Land’s Metropolis, A.
Huxley’s Brave New world, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Ray Bradbury’s
Fahrenheit 451.
Early SF also inherits from a positivist tradition in which science is of paramount
importance. This scientific aspect of SF is also common in detective novels. “Cette
propension à introduire une certaine mécanique du récit, aussi bien dans la littérature policière
que dans la littérature de SF, va de pair avec l’influence grandissante des sciences – plus
exactement d’une méthode scientifique – dans le domaine romanesque”179. Brian Stableford
lays insistence on the fact that “Many members of the new generation of professional writers
created by the new periodicals dabbled in scientific romance as the dabbled in detective
fiction and adventure stories”180, and one of the most notable of them surely was Doyle.
178
Quoted by J.-P. Picot, op. cit., p. 274.
179
C. Grenier, op. cit., p. 73.
180
B. Stableford, op. cit., p. 27.
54
Actually, the very debate aroused curiosity from many physicists contemporary to Wells, but
still inspires SF writers today. While E.A. Abbott conceived “a fantasy in many
dimensions”181 made of several lands — pointland (no dimension), lineland (one dimension),
flatland (two dimensions) and spaceland (three dimensions) —, C. Priest chose to make an
homage to Wells in his Space Machine182; in this novel, Amelia, the main female character,
compares the difference between paintings and models to the difference between being still
and moving in order to explicit the passage from a third dimension to a fourth dimension.
Another debate which has inspired many writers is obviously Darwin’s theories, which has
shocked people, who refused to admit their lineage with apes. Thus, while P. Boulle wrote La
Planète des Singes, King Kong was brought in New York just as a pterodactyl is brought in
London in The Lost World.
Some writers were inspired by time theories, such as J.W. Dunne in his Experiment
with Time or J.B. Priestley in Dangerous Corner while others chose to display time machines
such as the kettles in Asimov’s End of Eternity or the temporal hot rod in Back to the future.
Time paradoxes have been thoroughly exploited in SF writings. Thus in Ray Bradbury’s “A
Sound of Thunder”183, the main character changes the result of national election by stepping
on a butterfly during his safari trip in Prehistory, while we saw that Barjavel’s “voyageur
imprudent”184 disrupts the whole chain of causality and genealogy by killing his ancestor.
Finally, Fantasy novels — which could be called a cousin of SF since sometimes the
boundary between these genres can be really blurred such as in P. Pullman’s His Dark
Materials — but also Space Opera — a subgenre of SF in which humanity has often
colonised Space such as I. M. Banks’s The Player of Games — do not take place in any
181
Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland (1884), USA, Signet Classics, 2005.
182
Christopher Priest, The Space Machine, a scientific Romance, London, Faber UK, 1976.
183
Isaac Asimov, The End of Eternity, New York, Doubleday & Co., 1965.
184
R. Barjavel, op. cit.
55
definite time period or place, which may be evocative of The War of the Worlds in which the
end of the nineteenth century is said to belong to past time.
Jurassic Park has been particularly inspired by The Lost World. Indeed, the book
written by Alan Grant, the main character, in entitled The Lost World of the Dinosaurs185
while the park is thus described: “Everywhere, extensive and elaborate planting emphasized
the feeling that they were entering a new world, a prehistoric tropical world, and leaving the
normal world behind”186. Actually, Crichton’s novel almost works as a parody of Doyle’s,
especially when the character enters the park since the commercial nature of Jurassic Park
turns the visit into a show: “Welcome to Jurassic Park. You are now entering the lost world of
the prehistoric past, a world of mighty creatures long gone from the face of the earth, which
you are privileged to see for the first time”187. However, Jurassic Park also brings something
new to the old theme of a preserved world from the past, genetics, which is said to be “the
only time travel in the world”188.
As for Asimov, he reinvented the Wellsian motif of time travel in End of Eternity. In
this novel, “Eternity” is a cut off reality in which people are able to change events in time so
that disasters, wars or diseases can be avoided. But eventually the protagonists figure out that
man does not evolve anymore in this place where time units are not years but centuries. The
reason why evolution has been stopped is that there are no more obstacles for man, who lives
in a world which is too much peaceful and calm. H.G. Wells drew a similar conclusion,
except that he was much more radical; he did not only reject the idea of progress but he also
included regression and degeneracy in evolution.
185
Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park, London, Arrow, 1991, p. 93.
186
ibid., p. 83
187
ibid., p. 135.
188
ibid., p. 305.
56
Moreover, Wells did not only inspire writers. SF is also a cinematographic genre which
has made its the theme of time travel by adding its own resource to the textual basis of
literature. Chris Marker’s La Jetée, released in 1962, is almost entirely made of photographs.
They work as a recollection of summoned memories. The hero travels in the past and in the
future in order to ask future scientists to save his post-nuclear society; he ends up killed in the
past on a pier, a scene which he actually had assisted to when he was a child while never
understanding why this memory was so traumatizing. If these travels are not achieved thanks
to a machine, the idea of evolution and his visit to the Museum of Natural History with his
lover are reminiscent of The Time Machine and The Lost World.
57
CONCLUSION
58
Time and space figure as integral components of The Time Machine and The Lost
World. Time, first, erupts both as a metaphysical and as a literary notion and one can marvel
at the fact that, in The Time Machine, time – and space, for that matter – is not a construct of
the mind. Instead, time and space, if anything, are fundamental structures of the universe,
something objectively given. At the same time, one of A. C. Doyle’s and H. G. Wells’s
primary concerns throughout their work is the issue of the narration. If the Time Traveller is
mostly described as being a scientist, the narrator of The Lost World is precisely described as
a young journalist, which represents Doyle’s effort to reintroduce adventure and sensation
into science-fiction. As for space, what is certain is that, in A. C. Doyle’s and H. G. Wells’s
novels, it is ambiguous : The question of knowing whether it is open or close, shown or
hidden, cannot be answered because it is alternately the former and the latter.
Like H. G. Wells, A. C. Doyle challenges the notion of evolution. Challenger’s
argument rests on the understanding that a close world has been found, in which evolution has
been stopped so that ancient species, such as dinosaurs or the human “missing link” have been
preserved. Both The Time Machine and The Lost World certainly attest to a human evolution,
providing the reader either images of his ancestors or a prophetic vision of humanity’s
degeneration; in this regard, they have probably inspired Stapledon’s works189. It is possible to
think that the theme of the museum is closely linked to evolution precisely because in a
museum space accounts for time’s deposit.
What H. G. Wells and A. C. Doyle profoundly and unknowingly assert is that time and
space markers are made elastic in science-fiction. They blur the distinction between past and
present, real and fictional worlds. Indeed, the time in which the action takes place both
conforms and transgresses in the same move the contemporary epoch of the writers. The very
principle of extrapolation that is at the core of science-fiction is inscribed in the narratives in a
189
Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men (1930), London, Orion Publishing Group, 2009.
59
utopian, almost uchronian vision. What is at stake is another “now” and while the narrators
come from a contemporary time, the worlds they are exploring refer either to a prehistory
(The Lost World) or a posthistory (The Time Machine).
While one may be tempted to suggest that The Lost World and The Time Machine
obviously fit science fiction codes and themes, this temptation should be resisted if for no
other reason than these novels were written before the codification of such a genre. Indeed,
the term “science fiction” did not exist; one would talk about “scientific romances” instead.
The important point to notice on the other hand is that such novels actually founded the genre.
It is possible to think that the writing of these stories was enabled by a change in the history of
ideas. A. C. Doyle’s and H. G. Wells’s work show up the degree to which Charles Darwin’s
and Karl Marx’s theories made a vivid impression on Victorian people. Another decisive step
is the integration of science in fiction, probably linked to a positivist stream; hence the issue
of a fourth dimension in The Time Machine or the scientific debates mentioned in The Lost
World.
Yet, regardless of the fact that The Time Machine and the Lost World were produced in
a specific context, their achievement in literature is not limited to this context since they had a
great literary heritage and influence. They stand as landmarks in the history of fiction which
emerge from classical works of the nineteenth century, echoing Jules Verne’s and Mary
Shelley’s works. The fact that insistence is laid on scientific plausibility is what enables us to
refer to The Time Machine as the very first novel representative of science fiction. “A crucial
change between Wells’s first version of the novel, “The Chronic Argonauts”, and The Time
Machine is in the motive for time travel. Dr. Nebogipfel, the Time Traveller in the very first
version, is, by contrast, a mad, driven scientist of the Frankenstein tradition”190. This theme of
time travel was taken up in many science-fiction novels or short stories written during the
190
John Huntington, “The Time Machine and Wells’s Social Trajectory” in G. Slusser, P. Parrinder, D. Chatelain
(eds.), op. cit. p. 103.
60
twentieth century, such as Michael Moorcock’s Behold the Man191, in which the narrator uses
a time machine in order to reach Nazareth and find Jesus. As for the notion of a lost world, the
most meaningful representation of A. C. Doyle’s idea is displayed in Michael Crichton’s
Jurassic Park which was adapted in a blockbuster film, although M. Crichton added the more
recent development of embryology and genetic control to paleontology.
If the lost world of Maple White can first evoke a paradise lost, The Time Machine
devotes an entire chapter to the description of an apocalyptic view of the remote future.
According to R. Crossley, “the forms and phrases of biblical texts infuse Wells’s imagination
and emerge in often wonderfully metamorphosed fictional shape”192. Indeed, in chapter 11,
the traveller assists to a symbolic dawn which is all the more poetic as it is not included in the
main story of the Elois and Morlocks. This ending is also striking as it is opposed to a
Victorian tradition according to which the end paves the way for renewal and new beginnings
— it is the case in The Lost World —; in fact, such a pessimistic view is characteristic of
Wellsian fiction193. The dawn of life displayed here reconciles two opposite scientific theories
of transformation. Indeed, while the process which is implicitly at stake is natural evolution,
the fact that earth degenerates in a primitive, regressive stage is evocative of entropy.
“Transformation might involve either progression or retrogression, and could give

almost as much emphasis to the possibilities of degeneration as to those of improvement.
What it could not fully include was the idea of extinction, since transformation suggests a
constant process more like that of thermodynamics. Indeed it is striking that both thories share
the emphasis upon process and transformation despite the divergence of their emphasis when
it comes to the matter of order and confusion. Evolutionary theory appeared to propose a
more and more complex ordering, while the second law of thermodynamics emphasises the
tendency of energy systems towards disorder”194.
191
Michael Moorcock, Behold the Man (1969), New York, The Overlook Press, 2007.
192
R. Crossley, op. cit. p. 23
193
J. R. Hammond, op. cit.
194
G. Beer, Darwin’s Plots, op. cit., p 16-17
61
This reverting process of nature enables us to compare the comfortless decaying earth
described by the traveller to the horrid view of origins Victorian people shared. Thus, anxiety
of origins as it is mentioned by Gillian Beer can apply to Wells’s novel:
“Evolutionary theory implied a new myth of the past: instead of the garden at the
beginning, there was the sea and the swamp. Instead of man, emptiness – or the empire of
molluscs. There was no way back to a previous paradise: the primordial was comfortless.
Instead of fixed and perfect species, it showed forms in flux, and the earth in constant motion,
drawing continents apart”195.
The ending of The Time Machine blends scientific understanding and spiritual catharsis.
While the museum stood for a memento mori for our species, this final dawn is a memento
mori for the entire terrestrial habitat.
“Here even more explicitly than in the Arctic landscapes of Frankenstein a scene on
earth takes us to the edge of space where we confront our relationship to the stars. But Wells
also takes us to the brink of a temporal gulf that is equally ominous. The Time Machine brings
home to earth the silence of infinite space and joins to its Pascalian terrors our dread of
infinite time”196.
***
Even if H.G. Wells and A. C. Doyle are founding fathers of science fiction, they
actually bridge the gap between earlier and contemporary works so that it may certainly be
argued that the origins of genres are quite similar to the origins of species. In this regard
science fiction mainly diverts from the gothic, sensation or adventure novels, it is a cousin to
speculative fiction, fantasy or horror, and splits in several subgenres such as the apocalyptic,
space opera or cyberpunk.
195
ibid., p. 127.
196
Alkon, SF before 1900, op. cit., p 57.
62
One of them, steampunk consists in an anachronistic imagery conjured up by the idea
that Victorians have made technological progress ahead of their time. The main characters are
often dandies or gentlemen full of erudition who experience adventures during which they
may cross the path of historical figures. If steampunk may refer to pastiches of scientific
romances with contemporary technological additions, it can also refer to other genres such as
fantasy, fantastic, or even uchronia. Christopher Priest’s The Space Machine is thus an
explicit homage to H.G. Wells, in which the protagonists go to Mars using a time machine
which is able to travel in all four dimensions; here they discover that the Martians plan to
invade Earth. Finally, with the assistance of Wells himself, they find a way to save their
planet. Thus steampunk plays with the icons of literature, the myths and images of Science
Fiction. It produces imitations or pastiches of Victorian and Edwardian literature which are
often close to serial novels and pulp magazines.
63
APPENDIX
APPENDIX I: an excerpt from The Lost World.
64
APPENDIX II: the Indian map.
65
APPENDIX III: Maple White Land.
66
APPENDIX IV: the entry ‘dimension’ in L’Enclyclopédie or Dictionnaire

raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers.
APPENDIX V: images from Pal’s Time Machine.

67
APPENDIX VI: images from Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.
68
APPENDIX VII: Pal’s time machine.
69
APPENDIX VIII: a genealogical tree.
70
APPENDIX IX: time of Dinosaurs.
71
APPENDIX X: an excerpt from The Time Machine.
72
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73
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Websites
http://www.cafardcosmique.com/Le-Steampunk-de-Fantasy-a-vapeur (17/05/2010)
http://silentmoviemonsters.tripod.com/TheLostWorld/LWNOVEL.html (13/04/2010)
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CLANET Marion

Sous la direction de Jean-Pierre NAUGRETTE.

Exploring Time and Space in The Time

Machine and in The Lost World.

Paris III – Sorbonne-Nouvelle

Wells, Herbert George. The Time Machine. William Heinemann. 1895.

. The Time Machine. New York: Bantam, 2003.

. The Lost World. London: Penguin Classics, 2007.

‘TM’ for The Time Machine.

‘LW’ for The Lost World.

‘SF’ for Science Fiction.

TIME AND SPACE...............................................................................................................................8

space in several directions.

about the blank map of savage territories?

discover a prehistorical world and thus travel backward in time.

believed to have developped from earlier forms’6.

place is a theatrical staging of prehistory in a preserved world, so that Challenger, as both an

we draw from The Time Machine and The Lost World?

interested in going elsewhere? Is this elsewhere a utopia, an ‘Erewhon’ 7 as it has been

seen as cyclical in The Time Machine:

inspires fear of dark creatures.

in London “servent à mettre en place l’identification du lecteur à Edward Malone et cette

transmission. A similar effect of suspense is reinforced in The Time Machine if we consider

organic story (LW 227).

a) Geographical recordings : geographical recordings such as maps,

drawings or simply narration

phénomènes externes”20 or by A. Koyré: “nous ne percevons pas l’espace – comme on le sait,

comme pour mieux disposer de sa référentialité supposée”23.

suggestive in an imperialist context.

b) Closed worlds and open spaces

c) Displacement: different means of travelling

movement is highly inspired by contemporary means of travelling in terms of spatial distance.

travel in canoes on streams and finally, they walk and climb.

cryogenisation or machinery. Yet, the use of time machines is a question of symbolism in a

I 3 – Time as a fourth dimension of space

a) TM and the idea of fourth dimension : a history

time and space30, or d’Alembert in his Encyclopedia31(APPENDIX IV). It was suggested by

M. S. Russell, “Minkovski reformulated the special relativity theory in terms of a space-time

b) Light and travelling, a cinematic approach of time travelling

optics36 and Virilio writes:

displacement, the cinematic impression created.

rewound videotape (TM 08).

landscape, whereas he does not relate his return journey at all.

themselves living in a Darwinian world in which old assumptions had ceased to be

of Doctor Moreau44 or The War of the Worlds45.

Saint-Hilaire and Lyell47:

peuvent revenir en arrière”50.

b) Progress and degeneration

movement of progressive evolution, which seems optimistic. However, a certain fear of

bloodshed (LW 219-220). Challenger is often animalized. He is compared to a bull, a

bullfrog, a buffalo, a bulldog. He could be compared to a Minotaur since is representative of

“That Wells saw progress as an unceasing process of biological adaptation is clearly

qui, je l’espère, pourrait vous intéresser. L’idée centrale – la sécurité entraîne la

considers the Elois as representative of ‘neoteny’, which he defines as “an evolutionary

“supposedly ‘adult’ traits such as competition, self-discipline, muscular strength and

depicting is not real, at least it is possible.

a) Uchronia and “histoires secrètes” or the question “if”

revisionism but it aimed at denunciating historical determinism by writing a new Roman

Henriet characterizes it as “une histoire secrète”:

“Il y a également de nombreux récits supposant l’existence d’îlots ou de mondes perdus

qui se passe ailleurs…”65.

b) Temporal paradoxes or the consequences of time travelling