The April 2022 Reading List

 

As I mentioned before, after two months of reading strictly time travel novels, I decided that for April, I'd head off in a different direction. I wanted to read non-time travel books by some of the writers who had made my time travel list. For the most part, I've stuck with that.

There are two exceptions, however.

After having read an article at CNN.com on a report of Harvard University's legacy of slavery since it's founding in 1636, I wanted to read the actual report. A link to the report as a pdf is below. The pdf is 134 pages. I'm counting that as a "book". That report led me to the Booker T. Washington "book" - also linked to below. Next month, I will follow up on this theme with something by W.E.B. Du Bois (to be determined later).

I've reviewed 6 of the books (not including the Washington or Harvard works) and links to those reviews are given below as well.

Declare                                         by Tim Powers
Fledgling                                      by Octavia Butler
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater     by Kurt Vonnegut
The War of the Worlds                  by H.G.Wells
The Massacre of Mankind            by Stephen Baxter
The Story of Slavery                      by Booker T. Washington
Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery
Her Fearful Symmetry                  by Audrey Niffenegger

The Massacre of Mankind

Stephen Baxter's The Massacre of Mankind is the only sequel to H.G.Wells' The War of the Worlds authorized by the Wells estate. Baxter had previously written a sequel to The Time Machine - evidently the Wells estate is pleased with his work.

For what it's worth, so am I.

The sequel takes place 13 years after the events in Wells' novel. The narrator of this work, Julie Elphinstone is the sister-in-law of the narrator of the first novel - Walter Jenkins. Jenkins' name is not given in The War of the Worlds . I'm not sure how Baxter came to choose the name, but I suppose he had to have some name, after all.

Julie Elphinstone does make an appearance in the original novel, as do a number of other characters appearing in the sequel; her ex husband, Frank (brother to Walter), her younger sister-in-law, the "artillery man" Albert Cook and the widow of the astronomer Ogilvy to name a few. Also mentioned in the sequel are Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill and George Patton.

The novel is essentially an alternative history. The 1914 war between Germany and France takes place (with Germany the winner) although England and the U.S. do not enter the war. Julie Elphinstone travels from the U.S. to England aboard the RMS Lusitania which wasn't torpedoed by a German U-boat.

Baxter does a good job sticking to the view of the solar system as held by Percival Lowell and the "smart folk" of Wells' time. The descriptions of Mars, Venus and Jupiter are wrong by today's standards, but it suits perfectly to the feel of an H.G.Wells sequel.

You won't find any spoilers in this post. You can go elsewhere for that.

My only criticism of the sequel is the length. Baxter's sequel is nearly triple the number of pages in Wells' book......just a bit too long for my tastes, but overall a pretty good read.

The Time Ships

Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships is a sequel to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine , officially authorized by the Wells estate to mark the centennial of the classic novel's publication. I've no information as to the how or why of their decision, but the Wells estate could not have made a better choice.

Baxter's novel is absolutely wonderful.

Baxter managed to write the novel from the prospective of a Victorian writer. I could feel Wells' spirit guiding his writing style. Baxter picked up the story where Wells stopped and he took the story to amazing heights. The novel is full of surprise twists and turns......going places where I never could have imagined.

One of the minor flaws in the original story was the lack of understanding on Wells' part of the various paradoxes brought about by time travel. Baxter takes care of that.

Of course, one of the advantages Baxter had over H.G.Wells is the advancement of scientific knowledge since the Victorian era. The Time Machine was written well before the work of Albert Einstein, and the later understanding of the science of Quantum Mechanics and String Theory.

I highly recommend that anyone thinking of reading this great Sci-fi novel read (or reread) The Time Machine before hand.

I'm giving The Time Ships a rating of 5 stars out of 5.