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H. G. Well's The Time Machine, the original story of mechanical time travel. The story has been adapted and expanded upon in a few different renditions; I was wondering what people thought the best version was. Out of the various comic book, radio drama, movie, and written adaptations, which one do you think has the best story? (Focusing on story, not necessarily looking at acting or visuals, etc.)

For myself, I grew up watching the 1960 film version by George Pal, always one of my favorite movies. When I was still young I read the Great Illustrated Classics rendition of the novel, which, though I didn't know it at the time, added a couple sections to the story, and I think they were pretty good. Then when I was a teenager I read the original novel, and I was actually kind of surprised at how thin the story was. The George Pal film expanded quite a bit on the characters and themes, and that's what I had been used to. Of course they added some obligatory romance, not necessarily an improvement but it didn't really detract either. But I also think that they developed the soul of the story really well.

Since the novel was written at the end of the 19th Century, and that's when the story takes place, it didn't have any perspective on the future to work into the novel. But the 1960 film was able to work the history of the first half of the 20th Century into the story in a way that fit perfectly with its original themes, and added elements from Wells' later perspective and writings about those wars as well. The film was then also able to make a deeper connection to how humanity had declined so much to the state it was in at the age of the Eloi and Morlocks.

So thanks to that perspective it had of early 20th Century history, and some incorporation of Wells' reflections on that history, I personally think that film has a better story than the original novel, expanding it while staying true to it. Though I'm not dismissing the novel's quality by any stretch. The more recent film from 2002 also developed the story quite a bit, but they took it in a completely different direction, less true to the novel and author, and I didn't like it as much.

I've heard there are several comic book renditions, though I haven't read any personally. There was also a 1994 audio drama featuring Leonard Nimroy as the Traveller, and a new BBC radio drama broadcast just a couple months ago. Anyone heard either of these?

Feel free to discuss the story in general here as well. =)

I'll agree with the holy man here. Nothing can beat a good book.

I have to go with the original novel as well.

The novel was groundbreaking at the time it was published. The Time Machine is credited as the first true science-fiction novel. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) was from the same time, but it was a horror tale. This was the original sci-fi, the granddaddy of all science fiction we know today. No remake or addition could ever top that.

I wrote my Senior Paper over H. G. Wells' The Time Machine.

I'm all for Jules Verne being counted among Science Fiction. Even though at the time, they were "scientific romances."

A definite sci-fi story by Verne would have to be From the Earth to the Moon, which chronicles a journey that is exactly what you think it is.

Even Verne had his forbears in "dime novels" like Frank Reade, Jr., featuring steam-powered airships and coal-burning mechanical men. But Verne's claim to the title "Father of SF" lies in his extrapolation from the existing technology of his day. He doesn't just show us fantastic machines, he shows us how they work.

That's what I think.

I'll have to find the paper again, but when I do I'll make a thread about it in here.

I don't know much Jules Verne, so I can't say if he was sci-fi before Wells was, but the information I was given/found said that Wells was the first science-fiction writer because he was directly dealing with science that was not plausible--entirely fictional--in a manner that made it seem plausible. Time Machine was more description of the machine than how it worked.

It seems we have quite the little debate going over this. I'm intreagued.

I haven't heard either the BBC's version or the audio drama with Leonard Nimoy, but there is one version I can add to the list: in the 1970's (I'm not sure of the exact year, though), there was a version made starring Alex Cord (whom you might remember as "Archangel" from Airwolf) as the title character--which wasn't half bad, but definitely a fairly loose adaptation of the story, to put it mildly.

But as far as which version I prefer, definitely the book, hands down! It's the only version that I'm aware of that features the title character's voyage even further past the time of the Morlocks and the Eloi to the time when the Earth is tidally locked to the Sun, which is now "large and red" in the sky (i.e. a red giant) and the only living creatures the Traveller encounters are giant crabs and huge bees--I've yet to see that in any movie adaptation!