ABSTRACT
When H.G.Wells wrote The Time Machine, he related the astonishment of his time traveller as the fateful lever is depressed, the machine is set in motion, and the future unfolds its secrets:
I seemed to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking round, I saw the laboratory exactly as before. Had anything happened? For a moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked me. Then I noted the clock. A moment before, as it seemed, it had stood at a minute or so past ten; now it was nearly half-past three!… I pressed the lever over to its extreme position. The night came like the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment came tomorrow.
(Wells 1958:20) 1