Alice and the Time Machine by Victor Fet

Victor Fet, a colleague with whom I have shared adventures in art and science, offers Alice and the Time Machine (Evertype, 134 pages, illustrated by Byron W. Sewell) on the 150 anniversary of the publication of Alice s Adventures in Wonderland and the birth of H.G. Wells. The novella brings together Alice Liddell, Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), John Dalton (of atomic theory fame), Charles Darwin, Francis Galton (Darwin s halfcousin) and Wells, who arrives in Darwin s time of 1862 from 1892 via a time machine.

Together they determine that Alice s mad tale is actually a message from the future, warning

them of coming chaos, bloody wars, catastrophic pollution and tyranny. They form the Time

Corps and use the time machine to contact scientists past and future to enlist their aid to try to

change the world for the better. As they do their work, they notice changes in their own time. At

the beginning of the tale, Wells is a nobody but becomes a famous science-fiction author while

the other Wells fades in his memory as if a dream.

Ada Lovelace (mathematician) and Charles Babbage (early inventor of computing technology)

are the first great thinkers the five time adventurers ask to join the Corps. A number of Russian

scientists and other great thinkers (Fet is Russian) are also enlisted, a detail which Fet bases on

the historical fact that Dodgson visited Russia.

Since they know what to look for, the Time Corps are able to save important papers and research

that would have been lost to the future. They inspire Dimitri Mendeleev (periodic table) and Leo

Tolstoy, among others. They seek to prevent weapons from being developed, but because the

Time Corps can only go thirty years in either direction, Wells can t see beyond 1922. He cannot

know that the help they bring to Bernhard Riemann, the predecessor of Einstein, and the help

they bring Marie Curie, will end up enabling the discovery of nuclear energy and the bomb.

Sinisterly, it is Galton (inventor of the concept of eugenics) that initially devises the plan:

“We will, within the biological time allotted us, enhance and direct discoveries—to harness the

forces of Nature—light, ether, magnetism—and place those Promethean spirits at our service

with new and inventive machines. We will work the betterment of the human race itself, learning

and altering debilitating conditions, and advancing medicine in all fields; we will experiment,

explore, and expand. We must become wise advisors to kings and presidents.”

The Promethean reference directs the reader to think of Frankenstein, and contemporary

audiences will balk at such faith in technological progress and the hubris that we can learn to

control Nature.

Galton goes on, “Eventually, society might even choose, instead of the degenerate aristocracy of to-day, to establish a sophocracy—a rule of sages. They may even breed the cadre as we breed

thoroughbreds—why not?”

Alice and Ada Lovelace (who would be the breeders in such a scheme) are not enthusiastic about

this part of Galton s fantasy. Ada quickly shuts it down.

The beginning, describing fantasy time travel, is light entertainment; the middle turns somber as

they begin to interpret Alice s tale darkly; and the last few chapters are laced with cryptic

warnings as Fet hints at the disasters that those who want to out nature nature and denature time

may bring.

Fet s extensive knowledge of the history of science allows him to make many clever references

and his Lewis Carroll-like love of artfulness shows in the connections he makes across time.

–VN Alexander, author of Locus Amoenus, 2015

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