H.G. Wells. "The War of the Worlds. The Time Machine, and Selected Short Stories", Special Foreword by Kingsley Amis, published by Platt & Munk, New York in 1963.

"I can see that "The Time Machine" is not only a fantastic adventure. The Morlocks of the year 802701 are a physical menace to the hero, true, but they also frighten us by showing what man might become. The fact that these fears are still with us undoubtedly helps to give Wells his extraordinary air of modernity. And yet-none of this would matter in the least without the peculiar thrill conveyed by the actual narrative, the events themselves. How is it that Well's marvels lay such close hold on us? Because we are made to feel that they are possible.

Plenty of amazing things happen in Hans Christian Andersen's stories, but nobody seriously believes in them. Even Edgar Allan Poe's tales often give a feeling of unreality. Well's secret- and a valuable heritage passed on to later writers of science fiction- was to lay the fantastic and the fabulous side by side with the everyday, even the humdrum.

Thus the outlandish doings of the Martians in "The War of the Worlds" are recounted in a soberly factual, documentary style, with times and places quoted almost in manner of a military communique. Whether or not we know the area in which the first invaders appear (the western part of the county of Surrey, roughly twenty-five miles from London)... And the Time Traveler himself is no mystic or scientific super genius, but a cheerful talkative, rather ordinary chap like you and me. Even Wells's short stories use this method at times...

The hero of "In the Abyss" is prosaic as the Time Traveler, and Notice too the severely scientific terminology in the description of the first specimen encountered." (Part of the Foreword by Kingsley Amis, 1963). There is realism in The Time Machine, but there is poetic feeling too... Then there is the infectious lightness and dryness of "The Truth About Pyecraft." From time travel to space travel, from interplanetary communication to global disaster-he seems to have invented it all.” [Review]

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Hard boards [a little wear], 5.3/4" x 8.1/4"; 514 pages, very good, near fine condition. [l5tg]