Christopher Priest - The Space Machine

The year is 1893, and the workaday life of a young commercial traveller is enlivened by his lady friend when she takes him to the laboratory of Sir William Reynolds, who is building a Time Machine. It is but a small step into futurity, the beginning of a series of adventures that culminate in a violent confrontation with the most ruthless intellect in the Universe.

First published in 1976, it follows the travels of protagonists Edward Turnbull and Amelia Fitzgibbon. The pair is dropped on the surface of Mars (due to interference by Turnbull) prior to the Martian invasion of Earth that forms the storyline of The War of the Worlds. Edward and Amelia, who works for the inventor Sir William Reynolds, have used Reynolds's space and time machine to jump into the future at the onset of the Mars invasion. They find that, on Mars, humans have been turned into Martian slaves.

This novel effectively binds the storylines of the H.G. Wells novels The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine into the same reality. Action takes place both in Victorian England and on Mars, as the time machine displaces the duo through space (in addition to time).



Read by Barnaby Edwards
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