02 June 2004

A Scientific Romance

Ronald Wright
A Scientific Romance
London, 1997, Anchor.
1862300119

Thanks to Ray Girvan for putting me onto this one: a wonderful book and a philosophical journey. The narrator (who has lost a lover, a friend and a life) comes into possession of a paper suggesting that H G Wells really built a time machine, which it will return to a specific spot on a certain date. It returns; it is empty. He determines to use it as a means to address his losses through present, future and past; but the structure of time and history are more complicated than that.

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