Sci-Fi Film Fiesta, The Swingin' 60s - The Complete Book by Chris Christopoulos - HTML preview

Image by Chatgpt

It began in 1971, but not by means of “the feared nuclear war” which never occurred. Get this folks, by the end of this decade (the 1960s) man will have set foot on the moon and all nations will start to “work together to push on into space.” By 1970, colonies will be established on both Mars and Venus! Can you believe that? Heck, it’s what we’ve been aiming for with our little jaunt to the edge of space just now!

So, what did cause the plague I hear you ask? “A bombardment of cosmic radiation from outer space.” It turns out that our fears about nuclear fallout due to nuclear bomb testing were somewhat well-founded. “The tons of radioactive dust that have mushroomed up into the ionosphere since the very first A-bomb test. That dust has remained up there and it's slowly destroying the protective screen that has filtered deadly cosmic rays from space since time began…..All the nuclear explosions that have ever taken place on earth have contributed to this” with the result that in the future every human being left will become “mutant or sterile or a combination of both.”

There were some “ lucky ones” who managed to evacuate. Who knows gentlemen, maybe you and your families will be among the lucky few to evacuate our planet. Yes, you heard right. In 1973, the Mars evacuation will begin. Only those who are uninfected will be permitted to go to the planet colonies while those left behind will be moved underground where they will build networks of tunnels like the Citadel. More than half the population of the world will be wiped out during the first year.

Kruse and the others seemed both startled and pleased to learn that my aircraft was probably still intact and operational. They even convinced the Captain that I had “an excellent technical background” and could provide much needed skilled technical assistance to them.

After disabling Kruse’s surveillance jamming gadgets, the Captain escorted me back to my quarters. On the way, he informed me that his concerns were of a military nature involving the imperative of saving the last of his people. He warned me against associating with Kruse’s group who he deemed to be the most dangerous scapes he ever encountered. The Captain himself was in the first stages of mutation but like the Supreme and the others, he trusted in Trirene's judgement. He then advised me not to do anything that would bring harm to her as she was their only hope.

“We have returned to our birthplace to die”

Bring harm to Trirene? I was falling deeper and deeper in love with her. After spending some time with her following my conversation with the Captain, I spotted Markova and believed she had been spying on Trirene and me. She told me that Kruse had to see me and that he had a plan to get me back to my own time. It had to be me to do this as unlike the other three I was from a time before the plague occurred and would therefore be able to prevent it from happening.

I agreed with this plan and met with Kruse and Borman who elaborated on it. Now when you hear my butchered version of the science behind the plan you’ll have to pass it along to the egg heads who’ll probably have a field day with it as the principles involved seem to fly in the face of everything we think we know about physics, space, time and what have you. Then you’ll really start questioning the truth of my testimony. I think Einstein will be rolling around in his grave!

Anyway, the phenomenon that brought me to the year 2024 is called a “relativity paradox” or “another dimension...A fifth dimension.” By 1970 it will become the “standard system used to travel to the planets at the speed of light.” Supposedly “at speeds approaching that of light, it is possible to break the time lock - the barrier that holds all things in a normal time relationship to each other.” That is what is supposed to have happened to me when I slipped out of one time sphere and into another. It also happened to the other three.

Now, taking into account Earth’s speed of rotation, orbit around the sun along with speed of movement of the solar system together with other systems of our galaxy it all added up to the X-80 moving at a velocity approaching the speed of light before ever having left the ground. At some point during its high-speed flight the X-80 approached escape velocity, 25,000 miles per hour. With an alteration of flight angle at a specific altitude combined with the right velocity, the ship broke the time barrier. For just a fraction of a second I was suspended in space “no longer interlocked with the time spheres of the sun and the earth.” In that minuscule amount of time, our galaxy moved onward in time to 65 years. And an instant later, I had re-joined our solar system.

If you’re still following me, this is where Kruse’s plan comes in. If I could repeat the altitude, angle of flight, and speed in directly the opposite direction, I would be able to go back into time 65 years. Now that you’re hearing my testimony, clearly the theory behind the plan proved to be valid – it worked!

Whild Dr. Bourman worked on the Time lock formula, all that needed to be done was to locate an escape route from the citadel so I could find my ship. For that we needed to obtain an early map of the citadel showing the tunnel work together with the airbase. With the required maps being on file in the Supreme's chamber there was only one way to get them – with Trirene’s help.

At first I couldn’t stand the thought of turning Trirene against her own people. However, she did agree to help and despite her feelings for me and her people Trirene understood that by me returning to my own time, there wouldn’t have to be any Citadel and that she and her people could live on the surface of the earth without fear of any cosmic plague.

Having made a tracing from the original map Trirene had obtained from the archives the plan was set in motion and if nothing went wrong, I would be on my way within a few hours.

A problem did soon arise however, as the Captain seemed to have gotten wind of the escape plan being put into effect and I found my self frog-marched straight before the Supreme.

I almost felt sorry for the old boy who appeared to be in anguish. On the one hand he truly seemed to wish that he could believe the reasoning behind my drive to return to my own time. On the other hand, there was his concern for his Citadel and his belief that I was being used by Kruse, Borman and Markova for their own purpose. In the end, the Supreme just could not bring himself to believe that such notions that lay behind my plan to escape could possibly be real. Is that how you who are listening to this tape view my whole testimony? That it is all the product of some kind of illusion or delusion in my mind?

Even with the prospect and reality of being with someone I love and who loves me and remaining in and inheriting the Citadel, I had decided that it was my freedom that I valued more.

“Hear me, fellow prisoners!

Hear me, fellow prisoners.

You're free.

The citadel is yours.

Hear me, mutants.

Come out of your pit of death.

Our time of vengeance has come.

Follow me, soldiers of revenge.

I'll lead you to the captain,

To food, to freedom!”

 

I stated directly to the Supreme’s face that I was prepared to attempt this escape, even though they would try and stop me. The Supreme responded by informing me that I would never leave the Citadel alive. After that the Captain took over responsibility for me and my destination was now the pit where the mutanats were imprisoned.

In the meantime, Markova had started up a rebellion amongst the mutants which curtailed the Captain’s plans for my own imminent imprisonment. Pandemonium broke out within the Citadel as the enraged mutants bent on revenge ran amok amongst the inhabitants and proceeded to “tear them to pieces.”

Markova had craftily worked out a plan to use me during the ensuing chaos within the Citadel to get back to the time barrier and return to her own time of 1973. Her plan had no room for Trirene who had not been born in 1960 and could not apparently be taken back through the time barrier. There was no way however, that I could leave Trirene behind and at least try and take her with me.

Such was Markova’s desperation that she was willing to double cross Kruse and Bourman. Unknown to us, the two gentlemen in question were listening and had overheard Markova with the result that one of then shot her dead. Suddenly Borman turned his gun on Kruse and killed him on the pretext that Kruse would have killed them all and had intended to take the X-80 himself. But there’s no honour among thieves as it was obvious that Borman was lying and that it was he who wanted to make the flight. The Supreme had been right about them all along. I just could not allow Borman to commit mass murder by letting the people in the Citadel die by preventing me from returning to my time and hopefully preventing the cosmic plague. Even if I could not make you who are listening to this account believe me and had to try and make that flight.

I grappled with Borman and as we desperately fought each other, the gun went off and the strat bullet struck Trirene just before I managed to overpower Borman. One part of my mind convinced me that Trirene and I were now free and that we could return to my world. The other part of mind together with my heart somehow knew that this was a forlorn hope. All I could do was carry the lifeless body of my love to her grandfather.

“Now the shadow of death darkens the holes of our citadel. Our bright

ray of hope is gone. It is the end of us.”

I took Trirene's body to the Supreme and not surprisingly the poor man seemed crushed by the grief he felt over both his granddaughter's death and the fate of his people, now that the last remaining fertile person had died. After laying Trirene’s lifeless body down, I resolutely told the Supeme that it was not the end and that “as long as we believe, there is always hope.” I assured him that I would return to my own time and prevent the plague from happening.

“What could have caused this?”

“I don't know. I have no explanation”

“Trirene was dead. The Supreme gave me her ring. He showed me the way out of the Citadel. I got to my plane…..That's all I remember.”

With the conclusion of Major Allison’s taped testimony, the void of silence seemed to reverberate with the sonar echo pings of incredulity, disbelief and hostile denial. After a pause, the President drew the attention of the others present to the copy of the report they all had. He had been leafing through it while listening to the tape. One section read: “ ….30 minutes later, Allison brought the ship in for an emergency landing.” Another section concerning Allison’s character assessment and profile indicated that “Bill Allison is our leading research pilot here at the test center” and that he has always been considered as being “fully competent and rational” as well as “mentally sound right now as any normal, well-balanced person can be.”

The Director of the CIA then indicated to the others an attached report from intelligence indicating that a Karl Kruse is enrolled in a West German university and that he's a leading student in astronautics. There also exists a Bourman who is a student of physics and mathematics in Amsterdam and that he's written papers on new propulsion systems.

The Presidential scientific adviser focused the group’s attention to the metallurgical report on what Allison claimed to have been Trirene’s ring which the Supreme had apparently given to the major prior to his departure and which Secretary Patterson first saw when he met Allison after his return to the airbase. The report indicates that the ring consists of an unknown alloy apparently produced by an as yet unfamiliar manufacturing process.

The science adviser followed this report up with his own disclaimer involving the the known laws of physics that according to him preclude the possibility of time travel and travelling at the speed of light. He had no explanation for Allison’s reported advanced ageing which Secretary Patterson personally witnessed. He suggested that it was the result most likely of some as yet unknown effect of cosmic radiation on the human body. His conclusion was that Allison’s alleged experiences in the future was a part of some a kind of hallucination or delusion brought on by the effects of cosmic radiation and shock. The science advisor finished off with a derisive comment about Allison’s fantasising over a society with beautiful young ladies with gorgeous legs wearing short skirts and falling in love with one of them. He felt that Freud would have had a field day with Allison as a patient.

A couple of the military men were none too pleased about any suggestion of restricting or halting atmospheric nuclear bomb testing. In their view Ivan and his goddamn Soviet commie bastard buddies would just love us going down that path while they happily continue testing and building bigger and better bombs. And for what? Based on some cockamamie story about the future?

The President patiently listened to all that was being said by those present but noticed that Secretary Patterson was being uncharacteristically silent and pensive during the course of the discussion. He looked directly at Patterson and asked, “Well, Lloyd, what do you think?” Patterson puffed on his pipe and thought long and hard before replying, “We have got a lot to think about.”

Over the ensuing years a lot of thinking was being done spurred on by events that if not handled correctly could have easily spiraled out of control. A couple of years after the Aliison incident, the world came perilously close to the brink of nuclear war with the Cuban missile crisis. The atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs eventually ceased and strategic arms limitation talks and treaties came into effect. We finally began to recognize the insanity inherent in the doctrine of ‘mutually assured destruction’ and instead of being able to destroy ourselves dozens of times over, we could wipe out civilization perhaps a mere handful of times over. By the beginning of the 1990’s the old enemy, the former Soviet Union ceased to exist. Not to worry, other real and imagined enemies were on hand to replace them and so we still had a lot to think about….

Humanity had finally managed to stagger into the year 2024 and had managed to avoid the feared Cosmic plague and total extinction of our species. And yet we still had a lot to think about. Some of which were unforeseen, some a result of past actions and decisions and others seemingly beyond our control: Increasing incidence of epidemics and pandemics; global climate change; the creation of the surveillance society; technological control, manipulation and domination; the spread of proxy regional wars; itchy fingers hovering over nuclear war buttons; geo-political, economic and military super power rivalries; the rise of populist and autocratic leadership; the normalisation of irrationality, bigotry and illegality; the death of agreed truth, fact and scientific findings; the seeming acceptance of other people’s dispossession, oppression and extinction; the hypercritical admonishing finger wagging while giving a nod and wink at state sanctioned and organized murder and genocide…...Plagues do indeed come in many forms both natural /cosmic and man-made and yes, we still have a lot to think about…….

Welcome to the 21st Century and the era of the ‘what we need to be doing’ industry whereby anyone with a few thoughts, a platform and an agenda has an opinion on what the rest of us need to be doing and……thinking a lot about.

 

Points Of Interest

Filmed in just 11 days, Beyond the Time Barrier is a 1960 low budget American science fiction film. It was released in September 1960 on a double bill with, The Angry Red Planet. It was one of two low budget sci-fi films shot back-to-back in Dallas, Texas by Ulmer, the other being The Amazing Transparent Man. The film's working title was The Last Barrier.

Director Ulmer’s daughter Arianne Arden appeared as the Russian pilot, Markova, named after ballerina Dame Alicia Markova.

Edgar G. Ulmer directed The Man from Planet X which is also featured in my eBook, The Big Fat Book of Sci-Fi Films of the 1950s.

Producer Robert Clarke directed and acted in his production, The Hideous Sun Demon which can also be found in The Big Fat Book of Sci-Fi Films of the 1950s.

Filming took place in the Texas Centennial Exhibition Fair Park buildings with cooperation secured from the United States Air Force and Texas Air National Guard, which enabled filming at Fort Worth's Carswell Air Force Base and the abandoned Marine Corps Air Station Eagle Mountain Lake. The badly deteriorated buildings conveyed what the air base would look like in ruins.

Film footage of a Convair F-102 Delta Dagger-first introduced into service in 1956- was used for the fictional "X-80" test plane. The film's action sequences featured Air Force weapons, M1 carbines and M1911A1 pistols.

The inverted triangular sets of "The Citadel" were leftovers from an exhibition at the 1959 Texas State Fair.

Vladimir Sokoloff, who was originally from Russia played "The Supreme" and had also played the old man in The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Some of the sound effects in the film had been taken from George Pal's The War of the Worlds (1953) which you can find in The Big Fat Book of Sci-Fi Films of the 1950s.

Beyond the Time Barrier was one of two time travel films released in 1960, the other being The Time Machine (1960) by George Pal, included in this volume. American-International Pictures took advantage of MGM's publicity for The Time Machine, and released this film a month earlier. Yvette Mimieux who had been considered for the role of Trirene, starred in The Time Machine.

Beyond the Time Barrier is one of those films that seem to improve with each additional viewing. Although a low-budget film, it is quite entertaining and engaging which is a tribute to the director and the able performances of the cast. Although not a fan of the process, I particularly liked the colourised version which seemed to give the film a new lease of life.

 

****************

 

The Time Machine (1960)

 

 

 

George Pal’s film version brings HG. Wells' original story to life with a good

combination of suspense, action and effective special effects.

Directed by George Pal

Screenplay by David Duncan

Based on The Time Machine,1895 novel by H. G. Wells Produced by George Pal

Narrated by Rod Taylor

Cinematography: Paul C. Vogel

Edited by George Tomasini

Music by Russell Garcia

Production companies: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Galaxy Films Distributed by Loew's

Running time: 103 minutes

Budget: $827,000 - 829,000

Box office: $2.61 million

Cast

Rod Taylor as H. George Wells

Alan Young as David Filby/James Filby

Yvette Mimieux as Weena

Sebastian Cabot as Dr. Philip Hillyer

Tom Helmore as Anthony Bridewell

Whit Bissell as Walter Kemp

Doris Lloyd as Mrs. Watchett

Paul Frees as voice of the Rings (uncredited)

 

A man’s quest for a future Utopian society.

The means: travelling forward in time in a machine.

The Journey: different time periods leading to increasing

disillusionment.

Final destination: a civilisation several thousand years into the future

divided into cannibalistic subterranean and docile gentle surface

dwellers.

But is there any escape from the one constant that might transcend

time itself: human nature in all its facets?

 

PART ONE: HAPPY NEW YEAR 1900

“That's exactly what I have - All the time in the world!...”

Out of the dark void flows the dimension of time itself in the form of familiar objects crafted by the ingenuity of humankind to mark,measure, quantify and tabulate its seemingly inexorable passage: sundials, hour-glass, water clocks, chiming mechanical clocks and the seemingly eternal and comfortingly familiar presence of Big Ben with the reassuring tolling of its bell.

The sounds marking the passage of time rise to a crescendo before coming to abrupt halt as we shift to the other three dimensions that also formed after the Big Bang that ushered in our universe and through which we conduct our day-to-day affairs within the strict confines of the four dimensional parameters.

January 5, 1900, a new century. It is the end of the Victorian and the beginning of the Edwardian era – a time of great advancements in scientific discoveries, engineering marvels, empire-building and the ‘heroic’ age of exploration. And yet, for all the advancements there is inevitably a price to be paid as is the case in any era…..

It is a time in which life moves at a pace still dictated by the horse-power of real horses and the leg power of cyclists which the lonely figure of David Filby manages to avoid as he makes his way to the front door of a cottage. It's wintertime and Filby draws his coat firmly around himself and knocks on the front door.

His knock is answered by Mrs. Watchett, the house-keeper. Upon entering, he hurriedly makes his way toward the library where three men are seated impatiently awaiting the arrival of their host. The silence is punctuated by the cacophonous ticking of innumerable timepieces situated about the room.

 

Image by Chatgpt

 

As Filby self-consciously takes his chair he is observed by the other three guests:

Dr. Philip Hillyer, a portly no-nonsense man who does not appreciate a lack of punctuality and views it as being unacceptable conduct and is “outright rude of the man!” In fact, to his way of thinking, “it’'s not the behaviour of a gentleman.”

Anthony Bridewell, a fashionable man of means who spends his time being acquainted with the bottoms of whiskey and wine glasses. Although an amiable fellow, he is of a class whose life amounts to little more than a dissolute waste of time without much purpose.

Walter Kemp, a middle aged practical man who has a strong dislike of having his time wasted. George’s non-attendance is to him “a confounded waste of time!” and that he has “any number of more important things to do.”

As the clocks continue ticking marking the passage of time with a mechanical consensus, the atmosphere of impatience and discomfort increases and still the unoccupied chair remains vacant. As the time reaches the hour of eight, Grandfather clock and its smaller brethren suddenly proclaim the arrival of the appointed hour. Time marches on irrespective of what anyone can and cannot do. In this shrine to time, the men’s host seems to pay little head to Time’s dictates. Very unusual for someone who is “usually very prompt, precise and punctual.”

The guests have been invited to dinner by their friend and host George, the owner of the cottage. He asked them to arrive at 8:00pm. and it is that time now. However, as we have seen, George himself has yet to arrive. Remove the element of certainty and predictability and see how disconcerting it can be. The men are less than happy about being kept waiting except for Filby who is far more patient, tolerant and understanding and concludes that George has “undoubtedly been detained, that's all.”

Shortly after 8.00 pm George’s house-keeper Mrs. Watchett, enters the room and hands a note to Filby. She informs the men that George has been missing for several days and that she’s hardly caught a glimpse of him lately and that “he never leaves the laboratory and comes out only to nibble at his meals.” The note states that George thought he might be late, and if that was the case, then they could start dinner without him.

Just before Bridewell is about to indulge in his favourite liquid pastime, the figure of a man abruptly bursts through the doorway of another connecting room and staggers exhausted into the dining area. Although swathed in shadow, it is evident that the man has undergone physical duress and is in a disheveled state.

The man staggers closer and manages to take a seat at the table. In the light it can be seen that it is the men’s friend and host, George. His clothing is tattered and filthy and his face bares the marks of bruises and lacerations. Wanting food and drink before providing answers to any queries from the others, Bridewell is on hand with a glass of wine which George drains with alacrity. George follows this up with a request that would cause any vegetarian to shudder with horror: “Meat...I'm hungry for meat!”

Soon it is time for George to tell the others what had happened and despite his fatigue he is quite keen to relate his tale to them which began when they were all together five days previously, “the last day of Eighteen Hundred Ninety Nine.”

Between a tick and a tock of a pendulum clock memory melts and dissolves the present and transports us back in time…..

“Why is it that we usually ignore the fourth dimension? Because

we have no freedom to move in it…...when it comes to Time, we are

prisoners”

The image of an ebony box atop a table begins to emerge and resolve itself. It is the “result of two years' labor” and has barely been completed before the beginning of the new century. In the library, all four men consider the box before them.

When informed that the object in question “has to do with time,” Hillyer’s mind naturally and predictably turns towards the likelihood of its being a practical device such as a “reliable timepiece” that can be utilized by the nation’s military. Filby, however knows better and leaves the way open for George to explain what he means when he refers to time.

When speaking of time, George is referring to the fourth dimension, the other three being height, length and breadth which one can move through. These dimensions form the parameters that our universe has bestowed upon us. Humanity, however has yet to figure out a way to travel through the fourth dimension of time and that is what George has been working on: the invention of device that will allow him to do so.

George goes on to explain that “for an object to exist at all, it must exist in the fourth dimension....and that fourth dimension is duration....Time.” Th problem however, is that unlike the other three dimensions “we usually ignore the fourth dimension because we have no freedom to move in it…..we are prisoners.“ ”

Meeting with skepticism from the others, George resorts to providing them with “a demonstration of the possibility of movement in the fourth dimension.”

Despite his friends’ skepticism, some interesting objections are indeed raised;

Bridewell: “If you start floating around in the future, aren't you likely to mess things up for the rest of us?” Perhaps that could also be asked about time-travelling tot the past and inadvertently altering the future with potentially dire consequences?

Hillyer: “The future is already there. It's irrevocable and cannot be changed.” Is that true? Can the future be affected or indeed changed by the decisions we make now? Or iff the future is pre-determined or pre-ordained, then what is the point of our existence? Could knowing what may happen in the future help us change it for the better by acting differently in the present? Or will whatever we decide to do now will simply result in the same future outcome?

The answers to such questions are what George is hoping to find out, namely “can Man control his destiny?” And in a nod to another work of the great science fiction author HG Wells, “Can he change the shape of things to come?”

George opens a box on the table to reveal a scale model of his machine. It is a thing of beauty consisting of a seat, a control panel with a lever in front, and a rotating disk in back, surrounded by a brass railing. It is a product of craftsmanship from a by-gone era. No mass-produced futuristic ugly angular concept crap here!

The other men begin to question George’s sanity when informed how the machine can occupy the same space while being able to move through time. George proceeds to demonstrate by taking a cigar from Hillyer and bending and shaping it to represent a time travelling man. He places the cigar man on the model machine’s saddle. Using one of Hillyer’s fingers, the lever on the machine’s front panel is pushed forward. Amid the sound of a high-pitched humming, the clinking of glasses and the movement of a chandelier, the disk on the back of the machine begins to rotate. After just a few seconds, the machine becomes transparent and vanishes from their sight on a one-way journey into the future, never to return.

“Happy New Year…..Goodbye, George….Happy Twentieth Century”

As the on-lookers try to recover their composure, the question arises as to what to do with “such a contraption?” For George it is simple, he intends to take a journey into the future while accepting the associated risks. However, his demonstration is met with disbelief and is put down to being some kind of clever conjuring trick. Rather than wasting his time on such nonsense, it is put to George that with wars being fought elsewhere in the Empire, Britain could use inventors like him.

When even Filby seems to acknowledge Dr. Hillyer’s seemingly sensible and practical point of view, George with an air of disappointment and resignation closes the lid of the machine model’s box with a decisive snap as if a final decision has been made in his mind.

After donning their hats, capes and coat, George's friends take their leave and exit the house, wishing George a happy new century.

“Why this preoccupation with Time?”

 

George re-enters the cottage after closing the front door, leans his back against it and thinks to himself in silent contemplation. Here stands a man who feels himself to be both out of place and out of time, ahead of a world that is just not ready to accept the seemingly impossible. George suddenly catches sight of a nearby newspaper with a headline proclaiming another victory by the Boer Army.

So this is what stirs the imagination and fires the hearts and minds of humanity in this day and age: the beating of war drums and the blaring of military bugles as nations march blindly off off to war. It is in this destructive capacity that a man of his talents would best be appreciated!

With clear-eyed resolution George proceeds to do his own marching toward a different destination. Fired with anger, he begins in the library at his writing desk but before he can do anything he stops upon hearing his name being softly spoken. He then looks behind him and notices Filby sitting in a chair with his back turned to him near the fireplace.

Filby has deliberately remained behind out of concern for his friend who has been “behaving oddly for over a month” and seems to have changed enormously. A very Edwardian way of asking someone, “are you OK?” Filby goes on to inquire of George why it is he is so pre-occupied with time. George replies that he doesn’t care much for the time he was born into in that it seems that “people aren't dying fast enough these days” and that science is called upon to “invent new, more efficient weapons to depopulate the earth.”

Filby feels that all we can do under the circumstances is deal with what we are confronted with and if George believes that he doesn’t’ have to, then what? Escape into the past and become a Greek, a Roman or one of the Pharaohs?

George says he prefers the future. Confronted with the seriousness of his friend’s intentions and his determination, Filby questions the authenticity of the earlier experiment with the model time machine asserting that “there are a number of ways of doing that trick.” Even if it were possible to travel through time, Fllby states that he would have “no desire to tempt the laws of Providence” and that such matters are “not for man to trifle with.” According to Filby, it would be better that such a machine as the one proposed and built by George be destroyed before it winds up destroying him.

Sensing the worst and fearing for his friend, Filby invites George to come and spend New Years with him and his wife and their baby. George however, declines the offer stating that he'd rather spend New Years alone. Still under a ill-feeling akin to a premonition, Filby asks George to promise him he won't leave the house tonight. George promises he won't walk out the door which under the rules of space-time he is about to circumvent and re-write, it is a promise he can technically keep. Then he invites Filby to come and bring the other three men over for dinner on Friday, January 5, 1900, five days from now.

After Filby departs, George proceeds to the writing desk with the intention of writing the note that will be read five days later. Mrs. Watchett enters with his smoking jacket and they both wish each other a happy new year. After Mrs. Watchett leaves, George in a somewhat symbolic act looks at the old calendar that reads: "December 3l. 1899," rips the final sheet from the pad, which is then replaced with the new 1900 one. The new century calendar symbolically highlights what George is about to do and where / when he is about to go. After writing the note, George inserts it into an envelope and places it on the mantle-piece where it can be easily noticed. He then rises and moves in the direction through the three dimensions of space toward a destination that can only be arrived at via the fourth dimension……

“In the year 2525, if man is still alive

If woman can survive, they may find……””

(In the Year 2525 ‘Exordium & Terminus’

by Zager and Evans)

 

PART TWO: 20th CENTURY JOY-RIDE

“In the year 3535

Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lie

Everything you think, do and say

Is in the pill you took today….”

(In the Year 2525 ‘Exordium & Terminus’

by Zager and Evans)

 

“ And yet by my watch which was in the machine with me, only a few

seconds had passed”

George unlocks the door to his laboratory which has the appearance of once having been a greenhouse complete with a glass skylight. Our attention is soon monopolised by the presence of a full-sized duplicate of the miniature time machine model that has already sallied forth on its rendezvous with the distant future.

There sits this full-sized reality; a wonder of scientific, engineering and aesthetic craftsmanship, almost a a living entity consisting of nickel, ivory, quartz and leather fashioned from from a man’s ingenuity and inspiration.

It’s creator’s expert eye suddenly discerns an imperfection that must be corrected and so George quickly detaches a crystalline lever from the machine and sets about polishing its rough edges with a polishing buffer.

Satisfied that all is well, George crosses to the machine, sits in the upholstered saddle and reattaches the newly polished lever. Turning on the power switches, he glances down at the control panel which displays the date: December 31, 1899. After looking up at nature’s familiar aerial passing parade through the skylight, George grasps the lever and gently pushes it forward. As George nudges the handle forward cautiously, the disk at the machine’s rear begins to rotate. He is suddenly bathed by a soft illumination emanating from the machine while his ears are assailed by a humming sound. After a moment or two, he pulls the handle back to the neutral position to bring the machine to a halt and looks around. There doesn’t seem to be anything different as he looks around. But wait! The clock in the corner indicates that it is after 8pm. and look at the candle on the table! lit is several inches shorter. Checking his pocket watch, Geroge sees that it shows the time as being just after 6:30pm.

 

“In the year 4545

You ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes You won't find a thing to chew

Nobody's gonna look at you”

(In the Year 2525 ‘Exordium & Terminus’

by Zager and Evans)

 

“ ....to see flowers closing their eyes for the night, changes that

normally took hours, occurring in seconds, was beautiful”

Infused with new-found confidence, George pushes the handle forward a little bit further this time. Watching more carefully as time passes, he notices that the candle rapidly burns down until it is extinguished. The clock’s hands spin around the dial while the sun performs an ever increasingly rapid procession along the heavens. A normally sedate snail seems to have discovered a new sense of urgency in its life as it races across the floor. Flowers majestically open and close with the coming and going daylight. From George’s point of view within the confines of his machine, only a few seconds have passed.

Meanwhile, across the street at a department store, George catches sight of a female mannequin in the window. George then pushes the lever forward a little more, and time outside the machine accelerates. Successive days pass by rapidly almost melding into a continuous flowing river of time.

It is now the summer of 1900, as George slows the machine and daylight is once again distinguishable from darkness. Across the street the mannequin in the store window is attired in a different style of clothes. As George continues his journey into the future, he is struck by the changing fashions as modeled by what will become that one unchanging constant, that anchor to the past that seems to be continuously receding into a vortex of unending change. The faster that George traverses time, it is the very seasons themselves that rapidly flash by……..until suddenly the light is blotted out with the unexpected boarding up of the laboratory’s windows. The machine has been brought to a stop: September 1917…...

 

In the year 5555

Your arms hangin’ limp at your sides

Your legs got nothin' to do

Some machine's doin' that for you

(In the Year 2525 ‘Exordium & Terminus’

by Zager and Evans)

“ Who are you, sir?”

“Just a stranger who once knew your

father”

With the world outside completely obscured from view, George disembarks from the machine and slowly makes his way though what was once his laboratory and home. Here he is disconcertingly confronted by the inevitable process of entropy wrought on all things by the passage of time. His laboratory and the rest of the house is dirty, dust laden and festooned with cobwebs, the result of having been abandoned for years. It is as if time has stood still, an impression highlighted by the fact that all the clocks within have now fallen silent.

After kicking aside the boards covering the front door, George makes his way to the outside of the house, the garden of which is overgrown with weeds which further reinforces the impression of abandonment and neglect. The sundial rests out of its proper alignment which George, the presumed master of time tries to correct. A wooden fence now encircles the house and George, the breaker of Time’s barriers exits through a gap he creates and steps on to the street. As he walks onto the road, he is startled by an automobile, something which he has never encountered before.

A man wearing a soldier's uniform exits the car and begins to ascend the steps of a store. George is thrilled to see what he believes to be his old friend Filby (minus his moustache). It doesn’t take long for the young soldier to realize that George has confused him with his father. This man is David Filby’s son, James Filby, who was an infant back in 1900. George is shattered to learn that David Filby had been killed in World War I,The Great War or the war to end all wars. A vital link to his own time now no longer exists. George learns from James that he (“some inventor”) as the owner of the house across the street had disappeared around the turn of the century. As executor of George’s estate, David Filby “refused to liquidate it” believing that George would return to claim it some day. The house had also acquired a reputation as being haunted.

James is dumb-founded to learn that George is unaware that England has been at war with Germany since 1914! After saying farewell to James, who is concerned for this stranger with the strange attire, the despondent and dejected George feeling like a ghost himself returns to the site of his own house to continue his journey through time…..

 

“In the year 6565

You won't need no husband, won't need no wife You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too

From the bottom of a long glass tube”

(In the Year 2525 ‘Exordium & Terminus’

by Zager and Evans)

“It didn't seem possible they could go on fighting all these years and

still have the

means of fighting”

Having returned to the time machine, his remaining means of control, George journeys into the future once more. He soon begins to gain more experience in handling the Machine and finds that he is “able to see the changing world in a series of glimpses.” Of particular interest is the ever fluctuating hemlines of women’s dresses as displayed by the eternally present and ageless mannequin. His house further suffers the ravages of time as he proceeds through the 1920s and 1930s. Suddenly, in 1940 the laboratory along with the machine starts to judder and shake. Concerned that the machine might be malfunctioning, George brings it to a halt in June 1940. The disturbance is the result of aircraft dropping bombs, anti-aircraft batteries responding and fires burning, all the result of another war, a new war. George dedudes that “there must have been an interval of peace in between these wars” and yet nothing seems to have been learned apart from preparing “even more effective means of destroying one another.”

George presses on into the future to see the outcome, only to witness his laboratory catching fire before abruptly disappearing. His house has been destroyed by a German bomb, but George now in the open, remains safe within the time machine.

“In the year 7510

If God's a coming, He oughta make it by then

Maybe He'll look around Himself and say

Guess it's time for the judgement day”

(In the Year 2525 ‘Exordium & Terminus’

by Zager and Evans)

“ The labour of centuries gone in an instant”

 

“If the button is pushed, there's no runnin' away There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave…”

(Eve Of Destruction

by Barry McGuire)

A odd disconcerting sound causes George to bring the machine to a stop in August of 1966. The sounds are the wailing of air-raid sirens. Getting out of the machine, George looks around and discovers that the ground formally occupied by his house is now the site of an urban park. George soon comes across a plaque which contains the inscription: "This park is dedicated by James Filby to his father's devotion for his friend George." Meanwhile, around him there is great commotion and tumult as people hurriedly make their way to air-raid shelters, urged on by uniformed wardens. In this world of futuristic sky-scrapered and mono-railed modernity, George is completely disoriented and perplexed.

As the last of the citizenry disappear into their subterranean burrows George catches site of a considerably aged James Filby exiting his store wearing a silver uniform and clutching a white helmet. For from wanting to hang around and engage in pleasant conversation, James is intent on getting into the shelters as fast as his arthritic limbs will convey him “before the mushrooms start sprouting.” Of course, this doesn’t make any sense to George any more than the terms ‘World Wide Web’ or ‘Streaming’ or ‘Woke’ would to someone in the 1950s or 1960s.

Suddenly, it begins to dawn on James that George somehow looks familiar. George explains to him that they had last spoken in that very same place back 49 year earlier in 1917. James recognizes him as the same man he had spoken to but before he can discover how George seems not to have aged in all that time, the incessant wail of the air-raid sirens starts up again cutting their reunion short. The sirens warn of the approaching nuclear bomb and James scurries off toward the shelter.

Without a meaningful frame of reference or shared experience, George full of confused thoughts and feelings makes his way back to his time machine. At that moment the bomb detonates causing buildings in the city to burst into flame and disintegrate- a city constructed over a period of two thousand years destroyed in mere seconds. The nuclear explosion results in a major geological disturbance, the creation of a volcano that unleashes a sea of lava that destroys anything in its path. A fortunately uninjured George who having been knocked down by the shock wave blast, has just borne witness to this holocaust. All he can do is jump back into the time machine and escape from the earth’s rage-filled roar and the oaths and obscenities issuing from long cruel wounds inflicted humanity’s knives of greed and hate.

And as our Time Traveler makes his escape away from the 20th Century and further into the future, will he find anything left that signified that humanity had once existed on this planet? Some plaque perhaps with an inscription:

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away. “

(Ozymandias

by Percy Bysshe Shelley)

 

Image by Chatgpt

Part Three: Centuries And Eons Of Darkness

“In the year 8510

God is gonna shake His mighty head

He'll either say I'm pleased where man has been Or tear it down, and start again”

(In the Year 2525 ‘Exordium & Terminus’

by Zager and Evans)

 

“Had man finally learned to control both the elements and

themselves?”

Before George and his machine can be engulfed by the flow of red hot lava, he pushes the lever forward to its furthest position. Amid the sound of high-pitched humming, the oncoming lava seems to leap forward and transform into a red haze that permeates the machine’s interior.

The machine’s speed through time saves George “from being roasted alive and encased in stone forever.” He cannot determine when he is as the dials are spinning too fast and the light is steadily diminishing. All George has is time – all he time left in the world before the wind and rain can erode the mountain that encloses him. For now all George can do is mark time and wait in darkness, “darkness for centuries” 70,000...80,000...90,000...100,000. Time enough to wonder “if there was still war being waged on the ground above ….. if man would still exist on earth.” Is this the natural and inevitable condition of human-kind: to endlessly wage war and commit acts of violence and destruction on others of its own species? Same as it ever was? Same as it ever was? Same - as – it – ever – was? And while he ponders waiting for the rock around him to wear down as the centuries roll by, George can only place his trust and faith in time.

“And how many years must a mountain exist

Before it is washed to the sea?”

(Blowin' In The Wind

by Bob Dylan)

Over the course of thousands of years, the rock eventually erodes and to his relief George once again finds himself free and out in the open. At first, he has the impression of a bleak and desolate landscape with no hint of humanity’s presence. He watches as trees “spring up like plumes of green smoke.” The unchanging colour of the landscape suggests that there are no longer changing seasons. Suddenly, George sees several new buildings being erected followed by the construction of a a dome and a tower which all too soon fall into ruin. Curious once again, George grabs hold of the machine’s lever…..