OdysIssuse 25e, Marcy h 2013 The e-Magazine of the British Interplanetary Society Time and Time Again… In This Issue l Retro Book Review: John Silvester on “The Time Machine” By now, we hope our readers will have In truth, modern science (even with the aid shaken the red dust of Mars from their of Supermarionation) cannot fold, displace l Patrick’s Sky - Part Two boots and are ready for new terrain or manipulate time in any way; but in following last month’s excursion with Odyssey we can offer you a glimpse of a l Gerry Anderson – Anything Can Happen Kim Stanley Robinson. And it’s possible tomorrow through the wonderful in the Next Few Paragraphs expeditions in time rather than space illustrations of Adrian Mann in our regular l Radical Vectors – Mind Twisters, that are on offer in this month’s issue. Echoes of the Future column. It is in one of Quantum Spooks and Grand Designs Presented with unlimited access to the the machines visualised by Adrian that fourth dimension, where would you go? mankind may one day set out in search of a l Echoes of the Future new home beyond the Earth. No doubt it’s a Seated in the most famous machine in l Odyssey Gallery science fiction, how far forward would you journey H.G.’s most famous character would push the lever? Or would you travel in the have approved of. l Postcards from Planet Earth: opposite direction back into the past? And The Odyssey Letters Column just what did happen to the Time Traveller Mark Stewart, FBIS l The Feedback Loop at the end of the beguiling story which is BIS Honorary Archival Librarian / the focus of this month’s retro book review? Editor ( Odyssey ) The space-time equation crops up in a very British Interplanetary Society different article in our Radical Vectors section. Reading Richard Hayes’s piece - [email protected] Next Issue the intellectual equivalent of a roller coaster David A. Hardy remembers his close ride - put me in mind of the choice l friend Patrick Moore presented to the renegade computer hacker, Neo, in The Matrix : “The Blue Pill, or l We review: Lunar Rover: the Red Pill?” Either way, as another Owners' Workshop Manual , and character from the same film once David Brin’s Existence cautioned: “Buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy, ‘cause Kansas is going bye-bye.” We hope l And Gerry Anderson's Supercar you enjoy the ride. flies again thanks to some stunning graphics by Austin Tate One man who knew all about roller coaster rides was Gerry Anderson. For children l Plus "Far Centaurus" - our Radical eager for the latest instalment, the various Vectors columnist, Richard Hayes, TV shows he created were white knuckle tackles worldships and colonising journeys, packed with suspense and the stars! adventure: would Captain Scarlet survive the latest attempt by the Mysterons to destroy him; would International Rescue be able to reach the prototype space craft Editor: Mark Stewart before it plunged into the Sun; and would Troy Tempest and Lee "Phones" Sheridan Layout and Design: Adrian Mann defeat the Aquaphibians’ latest attempt to (www.bisbos.com ) destroy Marineville? All of these rides made Production Quality: Mel Hacker, David A. childhood a wonderful and thrilling place to Hardy, Richard Hayes, Martin Postranecky be (and inspired many a young engineer and John Silvester and rocket scientist) as remembered by Mat Distribution and web support: Irvine in his fine tribute to Gerry. The Ralph Timberlake, Andrew Vaudin and universe created by Gerry Anderson is Ben Jones somehow timeless and these shows remain as popular today as they have ever been, as Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and Neo Odyssey is published every month by the evidenced by the recent news that a new (Keanu Reeves) discuss alternative realities and BIS and is circulated by email. Feedback on series of Thunderbirds is planned for 2015. cosmic conundrums in The Matrix . the e-Magazine is welcome, including Image courtesy Warner Bros. suggestions for future articles, via [email protected] Odyssey: The e-Magazine of the British Interplanetary Society: March 2013 www.bis-space.com 1 Retro Book Review: John Silvester on “The Time Machine” “The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated... Long ago I had a vague inkling of a machine...that shall travel indifferently in any direction of Space and Time, as the driver determines.” The Time Machine (1895), H.G.Wells “So to the future I shall go.” A Scientific Romance (1997), Ronald Wright “I am Yesterday.” The Egyptian Book of the Dead Where to? Rod Taylor considers his destination in George Pal’s 1960 film adaption of the most famous literary voyage through time. I first came across this famous novella in my be a socialist so perhaps it can be interpreted forward, into one of the nearer ages, in youth, and it left a powerful impression on as a triumph of the individual over which men are still men, but with the me. H.G. Wells, one of the twentieth century's collectivism. I prefer to see it as a superb riddles of our own time answered and its most prolific authors, crafted the story in piece of science fiction, beautifully written wearisome problems solved?” 1895, in the early days of his writing career. with a highly original storyline. The world was still in the “balloon age,” and The story’s time line encompasses millions of Further reading: Odyssey recommends: so the idea of time travel might have seemed years and provides Wells with a further no more improbable than journeying literary tool, one which he uses to through space. magnificent effect towards the end of the The Time Ships: Stephen Baxter’s authorised In the story, Wells's literary style has a certain work. After he escapes from the Morlocks, sequel to The Time Machine. formality which chimes well with the period. the Time Traveller moves forward some thirty A Scientific Romance : Ronald Wright’s The Time Traveller is never named and we million years into the future - when the Sun intriguing novel based on a modern day learn little about him, apart from the has turned into a red giant - drawn by a desire voyage in a “late Victorian time capsule: a unwitting testimony concerning his wealth, to discover the Earth's ultimate fate. This is cross between a club car and a diving bell… a and that he has seventeen papers on physical not an essential part of the plot and does not sphere like a sea-urchin.” optics to his credit. His journey takes him feature in either of the films; but in these When Worlds Collide : H.G. Wells and forward in time to the year 802,701 where paragraphs Wells paints a vivid picture of the the British Interplanetary Society – most of the story takes place; and his battles dying Earth. “I cannot convey the sense of What Might Have Been: with the Morlocks on behalf of the effete Eloi abominable desolation that hung over the http://www.bis-space.com/ are well known, having been brought to life world. The red eastern sky, the northward 2012/05/23/4805/when-worlds-collide in the two Hollywood films of 1960 and 2002. blackness, the salt Dead Sea, the stony beach Of these I favour the former. Beginning in the crawling with these foul, slow stirring dying hours of 1899 and aided by a musical monsters....” and a little further on: “It would score written by Russell Garcia - which seems be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the to lean heavily in parts on Debussy’s wistful sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the piano prelude “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair” - cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that it gives substance, colour and a melancholic makes the background of our lives – all that atmosphere to the storyline. Although the was over.” film now shows its age in comparison with Wells leaves us with an enigma, the fate of the later version, it did achieve an Oscar for its his unnamed Time Traveller, who special effects, and is well worth seeing. disappears, never to be seen again. Perhaps More than a century old now, the story of the it was the best way to end the story, but if Time Traveller has not aged at all, partly due you own the whole of time how can you to its essential simplicity. We never find out really ever vanish? how the time machine works or its power Maybe the final word belongs to the Time source, and there is little other science. And Traveller's friend, David Philby: “Will he ever on his return, the only evidence the Time return?” Or has he been "swept back into the Traveller has to verify his story is a single past… into the abysses of the Cretaceous flower given to him by Weena (a “fragile Sea; or among the grotesque saurians, the A photo of the writer as Time Traveller? creature of futurity”), one of the Eloi. huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times. He Was Wells himself the pilot of the first ever The story can be viewed as a social may even now – if I may use the phrase – be Time Machine? commentary of the time, or just a tale of wandering on some plesiosaurus-haunted good versus evil. Wells professed himself to Oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age.