Wednesday 9 November 2016

Time Travel And Invisibility

HG Wells wrote The Time Machine and The Invisible Man. The Time Machine and the Time Traveler are invisible and intangible while traveling although I do not accept Wells' explanation of this. Christopher Eccleston played the time traveling title character of Doctor Who and an invisible man in Heroes.

Poul Anderson wrote three novels, a series and several short stories about time travel. Did he address invisibility? I have to ask this because I have not read every short story by Anderson. If Anderson did address this concept, then he would have presented a scientific rationale for invisibility and also have deduced some unforeseen consequences of the idea, like Wells:

Wells' Invisible Man is permanently invisible so he must wear clothes and bandages to conceal his condition while dealing openly with others;
he must go naked when utilizing his invisibility;
at one point, two boys see his footprints appearing in the snow;
he becomes grotesquely visible after eating, until his body has digested the food;
when they are aware that he is present and also a threat, a group of men soon learn to walk forward shoulder to shoulder beating the empty air with clubs...

Wells wrote "The Country of the Blind," in which the sighted man was regarded as deluded and the citizens offered to cure him by removing his eyes. Similarly, the Invisible Man failed in his planned Reign of Terror.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

The closest I think Poul Anderson came to using "invisibility" in his works being the tarnkappe I saw mention of in OPERATION CHAOS.

Sean

Paul Shackley said...

Sean,
Well spotted.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Thanks!

Sean