FANTASY REVIEW Come in TV

FANI TASY RTVIEVV Vol. III, No. 14 ONE SIilLLING .APR.-MAY '49 Fontosy on lelevision JOHI{ CARNELL reports on .THE TIME MACHINE' Science & Fiction THN SDABOII FOB SUPBBN|AN By JOHN K. AIKEN Mosters of Fantosy ARTHUR F. HILLMAN on Clark Ashton Smith Book Reviews The Badio Man and The Golden Amilzzotr By THOMAS SHERIDAN FANTASY gether in a project which, if it had not failed for lack of capital, might have TELEVlSl0ll resulted in the filming of the Time Traveiler's adventures---or, at least, in TAKES TO an attempt at something which even today's film-makers Would scarcely dare to tackle. But could he possibly have dreamed, FANTASY in 1894 (any more than we did only a few months ago), that "The Time Machine" would be presented to &n By J0HN CARI{ELI audience of thousands, sitting com- fortably in their own homes before years young their television screens in 1949? In Over flfty ago, a writer spite ol difficulties which were readily who was destined to become world- recognised, produc- famous for his imaginative conceptions such an ambitious of things to come sat down and wrote tion was not too much for the B.B.C. his first successful fantasy. It'was to attempt; and if they did not succeed an inventor who fashioned to the extent of satisfying the arm- the story of chair critics of the Press-one of whom a machine on which he journeyed into yawn, the future, stopped ofi to take a look described it, with a as " The year Crawl of Time"-at least they were at mankind in the 802701, and quick to see in the brave try the travelled on into the dim vistas of the making of television history. world's end before returning to the were, actually, security of the 19th Century. There two attempts, Wells' The the first having caused such a furore It is said that tale of " of caustic comment* that several Time Machine" set the early British revisions calculated to improve the fiIm pioneer, R,obert Paul, thinking whole production were about the possibilities of the screen made in the been suggested that second showing. Even then yiewers play. It has even who looked-in Versions the author himself ma5r have been on both influenced, if only subconsciously, by found difficulty in deciding which new version was the better. But it the awakening Lechnique of the was generally agreed that " The art form when he wrote his amazing Time Machine" had been worth the tale. At any rate, he and Paul got to- time and trouble-and the money- spent on it. For the fantasy fan, especially, it was a momentous event, indicative of the shape of things to FANTASY REVIEW come in TV. A Journa,l for Readers, Writers and The flrst announcement of the play Collectors of Imaginative Flction caused quite a controversy over the producer SHILLING courageous bid of Flobert BI-MONTHLY: ONE Barr and scene designer Barry Learoyd Editoriral, Advertising and Pub- to present this corner-stone of science lishing Ofrce: 115 Wanstead Park fiction in a medium to which, it seemed Road, Ilford, Essex. to the sceptics, it was quite unadapt Subscription rates: In Great able. The discussions between the Britain and Dominions (except producer and his staff over the ticklish Canada) 6/- per year. Single copies problems raised were the 1/-. Dost free. In Canada and the technical it U.S.A., $1.50 per year. Single x Especially by Observer critic W. E. copies, 25c., post free. Wiuiams, who condemned "the ill-fated Vol. 3, No. 14 APr.-Ma,y '49 endeavour to confine the cosmic vision of H. G. Wells upon a minia,ture screen. Editor: Walter Gillings. Its resources," he argued, "are too Associate Editors: John Carnell, pathetically meagre to cope with such a J. Michael Rosenblum, D. R. Smith, story . and its cardboard improvisa- Arthur F. Hillman, FTed C. Brown, tions of the iandscapes of Utopia reduced Frank Edward Arnold, J. O. New- the fable to banality. The impersonation man, A. Vincent Clarke. of the creatures who inhabited Futurity A me r i c an Correspondents: was another exposure of the limitations David l(ishi (New York), Fbrrest of the medium, a.nd the delicate little J. Ackerman (Hollywood), Sam citizens of the Golden Age (with their Moskowitz (Newark, N.J.), Bob sinister troglodyte guardians) proved a Tucker (Bloomington, IlI.) nere rabble of pantomime elves dressed in horrible co,stumes." REVIEW 3 subject of an artlcle ln The Raillo Tlmes. How could they give an im- pression of the passing of hundreds of thousands of years in the space of some three minutes? How to design sets strictly limited in size to really look Iike a bizarre world of the distant future? Horv to shorv the Morlocks in their dark underground domain? An article in Illustrateil. with three pages of stills and pictures of the production in the making, appearing after the flrst showing, revealed how some of these difficulties were overcome. It also reported how it was proposed to vary the second production to meet the criticism that the whole thing amounted to no more than "an exercise in elementary fretwork," in which buiidings of the future had been cut out of futuristic photographs or plastic spheres, and mounted in frames only eight inches high before being made into fllm sequences. My own reaction, on the flrst showing, was that " The Time Machine" was a first-class job of television, consider- ing the limitations of Alexandra Palace The Time Traveller meets the Eloi. with which all viewers are famiiiar A scene from the television version of through the Press. I thought Mr. "The Tlme Machine." Barr had succeeded, as far as anyone could expect with such a di-fficult sub- clock recorded the passing of many ject, in making the show enjoyable hours, the lights began to dip and rise and, at the same time, understandable to indicate the passage of the days, and to the majority of viewe6. But the as this efiect speeded up the walls of gentlemen of the Press, ever ready the room gradually dissolved. In the with their blunt instruments to do second performance this was cut out, murder for the sake of a new anqle, killing the impre$sion of fast-moving thought otherwise; so much so that time. But, outside, the sun moves ever the B.B.C., for the second showing. more swiftly across the sky until it is a made changes in the dialogue and continuous band of light, rising and chopped pieces from the time-travel falling to indicate the equinoxes, and sequences in an attempt to pacify the throwing into vivid relief the changing reviewers and give those of its viewers shapes of successions of buildings which who found it hard to swallow a better become more startlingly futuristic as chance to appreciate the implications the Traveller flashes through the ages. of the idea right from the flrst scene. Eventually the buildings are replaced Condensed to a little less than an by domes and peculiar stilted erections, hour, the play opened with the Time and as they fade the Traveller arrives Traveller, played by Russell Napier, dis- in the era of the Eloi. These were cussing his thmries with his friends played entirely by small women and after dinner. He shows them a model children, the Traveller towering above of the Time Machine, and while they them llke a god-which they imagined watch. it slowly fades from the table him to be-and the difficulty of their on which it is resting. Then he shows speech was easily overcome by limiting them. in another room, the actual their vocabulary to shrill laughs and machine on which he proposes to twitterings. travel, bnt they are even more The action became slower as the sceptical and leave him to his reverie. Traveller, having surveyed his surround- fmpatient to prove his case, the ings, discussed the past and mused Traveller mounts the machine (a upon the present with the uncompre- beautifully designed contraption) and hending Weena. but grew in suspense sets ofi into the future. with his discovery of the fact that the In the flrst showing, after a brief Morlocks had abstracted the Time interval in which the hands of the wall- Machine and his futile efforts to + FA NTA 3Y recover tt. On hls descendlng ltrto the depttrs where these degenerate R,EADEn,S AN,E INVITED machine-minders performed their mys- to let the Editor know which fea- t€rious tasks, it was completely dark tures of Fantasy Review ttrey flnd end all the viewers saw of them was most useful or enJoyable, and tJreir glowing eyes moving the black- which-if any-they like the least. in Constructive criticisms and sug- Dess. gestions for articles are welcomed. Escaping their clutches, the Traveller returns to the surface a^nd ttre patheti- excursion into fantasy, "R.U.R.," which cally hopeless mihistra,tioDs of Weena,, was totally devoid of futuristic feeling. with whom he tries to seek out a refuge Then, the sense of world crisis was for the Eloi against tJre depredations kilied by the use of a single seiting for of the Morlocks. Thus he stumbles the entire performance, whereas the on a derelict museum where he findg present technique of "mixing" prepared decayed books and live matches before telecine films with "live" scenes might they are driven out by tXre Morlock$- have made Capek's drama as animated who again remain lurseen by tlre audt as his robots.

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