I read this in the omnibus edition (with the wonderful A Dream of Wessex) that was done by the short-lived imprint Earthlight, 'way back when.As will be evident to all, I'm a great fan of Priest's work. I read this novel many years ago and, while I enjoyed it on its own terms, felt it to be the weakest of his books. Rereading it recently confirmed both of these senses to me: the fact that his writing has gone from strength to strength in later novels makes The Space Machine seem even flimsier, yet I enjoyed the romp even more this time around. That said, I was more irritated this time by the constant stream, most especially in the earlier chapters, of arch knowingness on sexual matters and narrator Edward Turnbull's astonishing innocence of them; that aside, though, this was lots of fun.Essentially this is a sequel to Wells's The Time Machine and a complement to the same author's The War of the Worlds. Edward, a travelling salesman and part-time inventor, encounters Amelia Fitzgibbon, the beautiful young ward of and assistant to famous inventor Sir William Reynolds, who proves to be the character known only as the Time Traveller in Wells's book. With a few drinks inside them and Sir William away on business, the young pair drunkenly experiment in his Richmond laboratory with the time machine, which -- as Amelia tells us -- is also a space machine, in that it moves in all four dimensions and not just the temporal one. When they manage to stop the device, they find themselves on Mars, with no immediate hope of return. There they discover a society ruled by the ruthless, soulless, near-immobile monsters of The War of the Worlds, who are creatures bred into existence from themselves centuries ago by the Martians, who are normally humanoid; the reason for developing these "thinking machines" was to tackle the problem of Mars's rapidly depleting resources, a problem the monsters have decided to solve by taking over the earth. Beneath the monsters in Martian society are the techs and slavemasters, and beneath those are countless slaves, who serve also as food animals for the monsters, who must feed regularly on human blood. After many adventures, Edward and Amelia find themselves in the cockpit of the first of the mighty projectiles fired at earth as the monsters mount their invasion. Landing near Richmond, they encounter H.G. Wells, who informs them that Sir William departed years ago aboard the time machine (whose automatic Snap Home feature returned it from Mars to the inventor's laboratory, without him being aware it had ever been gone) and has never been heard of since. The trio, in Sir William's home, build a second, more primitive version of the time machine, employing its space-machine capabilities to mount a resistance against the Martian conquerors . . .While I was reading it occurred to me that, with The Space Machine, Priest must have more or less invented the recursive Steampunk novel. The only other one I can offhand think of that's of similar vintage is Tim Powers's The Anubis Gates, but that was published quite a few years later, in 1983. Hm. Checking in the Clute/Nicholls Encyclopedia of Science Fiction I find it mentions also Michael Moorcock's The Warlord of the Air which, published in 1971, predates The Space Machine. As with Colin Greenland -- another extremely literary writer -- being the one to trigger the great Space Opera Revival with his Take Back Plenty (and I can remember disbelieving him, a couple of years before that, when he told me he thought Space Opera was due for a comeback), it seems an unexpected matchup. All power to Priest's elbow that it should be so.
This was a weird little book. It's an effort by Priest to fuse together H.G. Wells' two most famous novels, The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, into a single shared universe. The story begins with the narrator, Edward Turnbull, meeting Amelia Fitzgibbon, the assistant to an inventor named William Reynolds. While the two of them are tinkering around with his time machine (which also transports people through space), they find themselves stranded on Mars, prior to the Martian invasion of Earth.This Mars is depicted as Wells imagined it, with red plant life and a weak atmosphere, but with Priest's own invention of a population of human slaves. The most interesting part of the novel is probably this middle section, where Edward and Amelia struggle to survive in the bleak cities of Mars over a period of many months.Later, they manage to return to Earth by stowing away on the first Martian invasion projectile, fired from a long cannon supported by the slopes of Olympus Mons. Here the novel fuses more directly with the original work, as Edward and Amelia survive in southern England in the midst of the Martian invasion. They even meet the narrator of The War of the Worlds, identified as Mr. Wells.Then it got a little stupid. Priest decided to tie the The Time Machine back into the story, and the trio return to Reynold's laboratory to construct a new machine out of a bedstead. Then they fly around the countryside encased in the machine's "attenuation field," making them invisible and invincible, dropping grenades on the Martians' tripods. This is a bizarre and wacky image in a novel that was, despite everything, remaining relatively consistent and suspending my disbelief. It's all pointless anyway, since the Martians are defeated the same way they are in the original novel, which I won't spoil in case you're one of the seven or eight people who haven't heard about it.I haven't read The Time Machine (though I have seen the shitty movie) and I've only read an abridged version of The War of the Worlds, plus an excellent webcomic version that no longer seems to be online, so I can't really compare The Space Machine to its forebears. Suffice to say that while it was somewhat entertaining, as science fiction goes, I'm not sure what the point was. The stories are similar in only the most basic of ways, and to merge them together seems like a brief thought experiment that Priest forced into a novel that never should have been.
What do You think about The Space Machine (1976)?
Some people may tell you that this is an exciting adventure which brilliantly connects H.G. Wells' The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. Don't believe a word of it! This is actually a devastating study of the effects of a repressively puritanical society on the psyches of its young men and women. Our protagonist, Trumbull, begins the story as a young man making his way through Victorian gentility. His body is subject to the normal desires of any twenty-three year old man, but Trumbull would never for a moment admit to feeling any such urges, even to himself. Thus when he wishes to meet with the travelling Amelia Fitzgibbon, even though for totally professional reasons, he is forced to use stealth, subterfuge and extreme patience - and his efforts still result in him being ejected from his hotel! Fortunately their paths cross again, and the first buds of romance begin to bloom in our hero's heart. In one touching scene when some of Amelia's hair is accidentally blown into his mouth, he savours the sensation with such a passion it is made obvious that this is the most intimate moment he has had with anyone in his life. After our young couple are wrenched from the rules of the society they know, the conditioning of their impulses remains in place for a long time, while events force them to take familiarities with each other they normally would not dream of. Their rigid behaviour and their rigid Victorian dress are both eventually lost and they are both finally free to express their love for one another. When Amelia is forced to once again adopt the neat, covered appearance of the Victorian lady, Trumbull literally weeps. But are they tears of joy for a return to normality, or of loss of the freedoms he had grown accustomed to?
—Simon Hedge
Un homenaje a «La máquina del tiempo» y «La guerra de los mundos» es lo que podemos encontrar en esta novela. El arranque me parece muy bueno, pero a medida que avanzamos el autor se recrea (en mi opinión) demasiado en la descripción de las batallas, lo que puede resultar una lectura un poco lenta y que contrasta con el ritmo inicial.Posiblemente lo que a mí me pueda parecer «restar puntos» a la novela otros lo puedan encontrar como un aliciente.En todo caso es una lectura entretenida. Teniendo en cuenta que es lo primero que leo del autor solo puedo decir en su favor que me animaré a leer otros títulos.Recomendada para quienes disfrutaron de las novelas o películas anteriormente citadas.
—Oscar_LRB
Priest realiza en esta novela una especie de refrito con cierto sabor steampunk entre La máquina del tiempo y La guerra de los mundos, una magistral combinación de historias tan conocidas como elogiadas que, lejos de convertirse en el pretencioso desastre que cabría esperar, consigue explotar lo mejor de ambos relatos sin perder ni un ápice de su manifiesta originalidad. Además de su delicioso estilo, la increíble cantidad de vueltas que da la trama y la imprevisibilidad de la misma a pesar de que conocemos su desenlace de antemano, la obra de Christopher Priest destaca por la intensidad que se desprende en cada una de sus páginas, la espectacularidad visual de ciertas escenas bélicas o la increíble caracterización de sus personajes principales.Reseña completa: http://generacionreader.blogspot.com....
—Sub_zero
