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Characters: The Time Machine


Susano

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Re: Characters: The Time Machine

 

Tangential, but....

 

I don't recall the "kangaroo devolution" in the copy of Time Machine that I read. Is this from a chapter Doyle removed? Is there a more complete edition on the market?

 

Doyle didn't write The Time Machine, HG Wells did. And yes, that chapter is missing from the standard edition of the book. The chapter is titled "The Grey Man" and can be found in some time travel collections. I do recall reading it somewhere.

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Re: Characters: The Time Machine

 

Doyle didn't write The Time Machine' date=' HG Wells did.[/quote']

 

And I know that perfectly well. My fingers obviously laid an ambush for me. :idjit::D

 

 

 

And yes' date=' that chapter is missing from the standard edition of the book. The chapter is titled "The Grey Man" and can be found in some time travel collections. I do recall reading it somewhere.[/quote']

 

Thanks for the information. I'll have to look for that. :cheers:

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Re: Characters: The Time Machine

 

A great take on one of the classic characters. :)

 

I'd give him Luck, 2-3d6 of it, to explain how he managed to survive his journeys, but that's personal pref.

 

The Alan Moore version of the character created for LoEG had a very interesting base "outside" of time, but that was fairly far off from the original character.

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Re: Characters: The Time Machine

 

On a related theme (end of the world etc) have you read 'The Night Land' by William Hope Hodgson? The lead character would be an intriguing HERO write-up...

 

Nope, never heard of it. Novel or short story?

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Re: Characters: The Time Machine

 

Nope' date=' never heard of it. Novel or short story?[/quote']

Novel. It's about a time traveller and the horrific future he finds. H.P. Lovecraft had this to say about it:

 

The Night Land (1912) is a long-extended (538 pp.) tale of the earth's infinitely remote future-billions of billions of years ahead' date=' after the death of the sun. It is told in a rather clumsy fashion, as the dreams of a man in the seventeenth century, whose mind merges with its own future incarnation; and is seriously marred by painful verboseness, repetitiousness, artificial and nauseously sticky romantic sentimentality, and an attempt at archaic language even more grotesque and absurd than that in [i']Glen Carrig[/i].

 

Allowing for all its faults, it is yet one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written. The picture of a night-black, dead planet, with the remains of the human race concentrated in a stupendously vast metal pyramid and besieged by monstrous, hybrid, and altogether unknown forces of the darkness, is something that no reader can ever forget: Shapes and entities of an altogether non-human and inconceivable sort -- the prowlers of the black, man-forsaken, and unexplored world outside the pyramid -- are suggested and partly described with ineffable potency; while the night-land landscape with its chasms and slopes and dying volcanism takes on an almost sentient terror beneath the author's touch. Midway in the book the central figure ventures outside the pyramid on a quest through death-haunted realms untrod by man for millions of years -- and in his slow, minutely described, day-by-day progress over unthinkable leagues of immemorial blackness there is a sense of cosmic alienage, breathless mystery, and terrified expectancy unrivalled in the whole range of literature. The last quarter of the book drags woefully, but fails to spoil the tremendous power of the whole.

 

You can find the story online here.

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Re: Characters: The Time Machine

 

Incidentally, Mike, I'm having my laptop repaired by HP for the second time in three weeks. Considering I did nothing with it during those three weeks, since I was on vacation, I'm not liking my chances of having the Nautilus or Captain Nemo done before the end of next week at the earliest.

 

Sorry for the delay.

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Re: Characters: The Time Machine

 

I'm still working on my 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea writeups, but I felt the need to make a few minor nit-picks here.

 

The Time Traveller:

- Should Astronomy and Paleontology be Science Skills instead of Knowledge Skills?

 

The Time Machine:

- I see 3 points of Characteristics and 53 points of Powers. 3 + 53 = 56 Total.

- The second "Immobile" power should read Swimming -2".

 

Generic Morlock:

- I calculate their STUN at 15, not 16.

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