This book is a sequel to H.G. Wells time machine written 100? years later in the 1990s. I loved "the time machine." it created such a sense of scale and perspective on human life that has stayed with me even since I was a little kid. In that book, the time traveler (TT) travels to the year -800,000, has a bunch of crazy adventures with the Eloi and the Morlocks, then eventually travels 30 million years into the future to find only a dying star and some giant crabs before returning to the year 1800. The main takeaway that I got from the book honestly was a sense of nihilism because everything humanity does is eroded away by time. All religion, philosophy, science, architecture, progress, everything is just swept away by much more ancient forces. There's also this sense of wasted human potential as humanity essentially degrades into two different classes that continually depend on each other for survival. Apparently, as evidenced by the giant crabs, nothing good comes from that relationship, no lasting technological progress of any sort. I didn't realize at the time, but Wells was critiquing class inequality.
Stephen Baxter picks up the ball on this and sends TT back to the future (I know) to save one of the Eloi that he had left behind only to find a completely different history had formed. Somehow he had affected the future in such a way that the timeline he had previously visited disappeared altogether. In it's place is a dark, seemingly abandoned earth in the year 600,000 dominated by the feared Morlocks! These are different Morlocks, however, they are incredibly technologically advanced. The Morlocks have even constructed a magnetic dyson sphere around the sun the size of the orbit of venus. They live in the outermost layer of the Dyson sphere where all their needs are met by extruding their food, water, and scientific instruments out of the magnetic flooring. The Morlocks no longer have sexual reproduction. Instead, their young are extruded from the Dyson sphere just as food or anything else. The last vestiges of humanity, evolved forms of humans but not quite as evolved as the morlock, live on the inner core surface of the dyson sphere building civilizations and waging wars (to the TT's dismay).
Dissolving Human Weaknesses in the year 600,000
Here's a revealing and powerful passage on how the Morlocks live:
"There was no war among the Morlocks. it took me some time to believe this, but at last I was convinced. There were no causes for war. Thanks to the mechanisms of the Floor, there was no shortage of provision, so no "nation" could argue for goals of economic acquisition. The Sphere was so huge that t the empty land available was almost unlimited, so that territorial conflicts were meaningless. And-most crucially- the Morlock's heads were free of the canker of religion, which has caused so much conflict through the centuries."So technology has been used to solve all of the social problems that come from scarcity. At least among the more technologically advanced Morlocks, an abundance has been created that destroys all of the "natural" human tendencies that come about when there isn't enough to go around. There is no need to steal from anyone else or hide information about something to one up a competitor. The Morlocks are free of the "natural" warlike competitive state. Did I mention that HG Wells was a socialist? Baxter captures Wells' ideas and hopes for humanity in this book in such a clever way. His social commentary bleeds through so powerfully in part because of the expanse of time that yields such conditions. The reader is prompted to consider the way we live currently, to recognize that it is not much different from the way that TT lived in the late 1800s. We can't continue to live in a world where anyone dies of starvation/poverty when even now we have such abundance. Will we continue to live like this even 100 years from now let alone 600,000?
Realizing Collective Solidarity in the Paleocene
At some point TT inadvertently takes a Morlock with him back to his own timeline, meets his younger self before the time machine was built, gets embroiled in a war with the Germans much earlier than history would normally allow, then gets blasted millions years into the Paleocene era. Yeah I skipped some details here. The horrors of war,Germans with time travel tech, the logician/mathematician Kurt Godel creating the substance "Plattnerite" which is what originally allowed the time traveler to twist space-time, even with simple 19th century technology. Details. So anyway, Nebogipfel (the Morlock) and TT are trapped without a time machine in the Paleocene and must survive. This is actually one of my favorite parts of the book because the time traveler realizes how cooped up and "civilized" the 19th century has made him. He has worked in laboratories most of his adult life but is now forced to climb trees and hunt for survival. He becomes fit and tan in the process. He remembers what it was like to be a child and not be so stiff all the time. This book takes a look, in surprising depth, at almost all sides of human nature. It's surprising because the time periods that TT vistis cause him to pause and reflect on his assumptions.
Of course the allied forces show up out of time searching for the castaways only to be followed by a time traveling Messerschmidt carrying a hydrogen bomb. Humans are so short sighted that they would even abuse time travel to go back long before the concept of war ever existed to smite their enemies. Nebogipfel and TT escape radiation poisoning, but must assist what wounded soldiers are left, creating the first tribe of humanity in this new timeline. The tribe works together to rebuild themselves and carve out a simple existence. TT reflects:
"Humans are at once more brutal, and yet, in some ways, more angelic, than the shallow experience of my first four decades of life led me to believe.It's a little late to be learning such deep lessons about the species with whom I have shared the planet for forty-odd years. But nevertheless, there it is. It seems to me now that if man is ever to achieve peace and stability- at least, before he evolves into something new, like a Morlock-then the unity of the species will have to start at the bottom. By building on the firmest foundation-the only foundation-the instinctive support of a man for his fellows."
Multiple Timelines, The Constructors, and the Problem of Interstellar Distances
TT and Nebogipfel move manage to scrounge up a time machine out of the materials of the defunct Messeschmidt and try to move forward to the year 1890 again, but of course time has been significantly altered as humanity has a jump start of 65 million years. As they pass through time they see civilizations grow before them rapidly, massive interstellar space craft can be seen in orbit, the world goes dark as pollution overtakes it. Finally, we learn that the new year 1890 is one where the earth is blanketed under hundreds of feet of snow, a chilling white earth scenario. Upon their arrival, the frost-bitten travelers are revived by weird pyramid things called the Constructors which are actually artificial intelligences with the ability to shape matter at the atomic level. We learn that humanity has essentially evolved into these "creatures" or were outgrown by them at some point. Vast time spans can take place without bothering these beings as the only way to cross intterstellar distances requires sometimes millions of years of patient waiting and travel. No human could wait so long, but the Constructors can. So they solve the interstellar distance problem with machine patience. We also get a clarification about the "multiplicity of histories" that is created when one starts messing around with time. Every time one uses the time machine, a new history is created in parallel that the machine cannot come back from because of the alteration of the timeline. The creation or discovery of parallel worlds makes it possible for contradictions to be resolved. You can go back in time and kill your grandpa without disappearing because it's a grandpa from a different timeline altogether.
The Constructors take the time travel tech and make massive time ships that will allow them to go back to the beginning of the formation of the universe. Before the arrival of time travel, the machines' mission was to colonize the universe with intelligence but even after 60 million years of technological innovation they were only able to harness the power of the galaxy. If they go back to the beginning of time, they can infuse themselves into the very fabric of the universe. Why? I seriously don't know and neither does TT. The goals of such advanced machinery moves way beyond the scope of normal human concerns. We're just not evolved enough to understand the motivations of such vast intelligences, we've still got to do mundane things like poop, eat, and sleep.
Anyway I've given way to much of the story over to synopsis partly because I read this book a month ago and was trying to remember the plot a little better. Without giving away the rest of the story, I'll just say that there is a nice causal loop that gets closed up as most time machine stories tend to offer and there are numerous callbacks to the original story while TT comes back down to earth, to his more human, mundane concerns. His perspective forever altered by his travels, he can no longer live in such a primitive age as 1890. So he goes forward again to a familiar time period, in the pursuit of more down to earth efforts again working with his hands to make the world he finds a better place. This "coming down" ending from the transcendent realm of the Constructors puts us back in a time to consider again the future of humanity but it is a more hopeful message than the one we were left with in the first book. It essentially says that we can get past our selfish social foibles with innovative thinking and the application of our technology. The ending makes me feel less hopeless. It makes me think that our personal struggles in a less than ideal social structure won't just lead to the ultimate destruction of humanity, that perhaps it's not just giant crabs in the end.
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