Wikipedia Bibliography
Like
Robert Silverberg I too was introduced to science fiction when I read
H.G. Wells' The Time Machine
at the age of ten. I have a beautiful edition of this work,
published in 1923 by Random House, which contains a fascinating
preface by Wells, explaining the background and genesis of this
ground-breaking story. It also contains a number of unusual
designs and illustrations by W.A. Dwiggins, two of which are shown
below, and which put meat on the bones of the story.
One of the most evocative and frightening of all passages in science fiction comes from this story as the End of Days approaches for the Earth and for Humankind:
So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth's fate, watching with a strange fascination the sun grow larger and duller in the western sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away. At last, more than thirty million years hence, the huge red hot dome of the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth of the darkling heavens. A horror of this great darkness came on me. The cold, that smote to my marrow, and the pain I felt in breathing overcame me. I shivered and a deadly nausea seized me. Then like a red-hot bow in the sky appeared the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to recover myself. I felt giddy and incapable of facing the return journey. As I stood, sick and confused, I saw again the moving thing upon the shoal - there was no mistake now that it was a moving thing - against the red water of the sea. It was a round thing, the size of a football perhaps, or, it may be, bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it; it seemed black against the weltering blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully about. Then I felt I was fainting. But a terrible dread of living helpless in that remote and awful twilight sustained me while I clambered upon the saddle.
 Great lidless pinkish-grey eyes |
 More than thirty million years hence |
One of the most evocative and frightening of all passages in science fiction comes from this story as the End of Days approaches for the Earth and for Humankind:
So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth's fate, watching with a strange fascination the sun grow larger and duller in the western sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away. At last, more than thirty million years hence, the huge red hot dome of the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth of the darkling heavens. A horror of this great darkness came on me. The cold, that smote to my marrow, and the pain I felt in breathing overcame me. I shivered and a deadly nausea seized me. Then like a red-hot bow in the sky appeared the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to recover myself. I felt giddy and incapable of facing the return journey. As I stood, sick and confused, I saw again the moving thing upon the shoal - there was no mistake now that it was a moving thing - against the red water of the sea. It was a round thing, the size of a football perhaps, or, it may be, bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it; it seemed black against the weltering blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully about. Then I felt I was fainting. But a terrible dread of living helpless in that remote and awful twilight sustained me while I clambered upon the saddle.