Through the Portal: The Time Machine

In PART 1, I looked at how the idea of time travel was used in literature before H G Wells wrote The Time Machine. Here I take a closer look at Well's novella. 

Forgotten Dare returns with the Mekon

Good to see the 'forgotten era' of Dan Dare will be back in print next month in 'Dan Dare: The 2000 AD Years Vol 1'. The first issue of 2000 AD came out when I was a humble art student and it became cult reading in the common room. Dan Dare had become a hero for the seventies, a more violent testosterone driven man than the old school Brit of the original Eagle comic.

Then came the return of dare's arch enemy,The Mekon, and a stunning cover by the late Mike Western. A few years later, I worked with Mike's son Pete Western, who got his dad to draw me my very own Mekon (see above).

Although the later Dan Dare 2000 AD strips by Dave Gibbons have been reprinted, this new graphic novel from 2000 AD will feature the first two stories for the first time since the seventies.


http://www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/2015/upcoming-dan-dare-the-2000-ad-years/

Through the Portal: The Birth of Time Travel

I was brought up on a diet of portal travelling stories such as the Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian Chronicles. From Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking Glass to Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, the successful children’s and young adult fantasy fiction novel often focuses on contemporary protagonist with access to another world. Often theses are parallel or alternative dimensions, such as Narnia in C S Lewis’s The Lion the Witch & the Wardrobe, or time travel as with Philippa Pearce’s Tom’s Midnight Garden. Recent books such as The Multiverse of Max Tovey can be a blend of both genres; Alistair Swinnerton takes a contemporary character into the past, into a parallel dimension where the Roman Empire still rules and to the underworld of the Awin of Welsh legend. It's the portal through time I want to look at here, and how the concept has evolved.