Three Tales of Travel

There is an accidental theme running through the first three of our serial blognovels this week: the theme of travel. This just occurred to me as I was posting the first chapter of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine this morning.

Of course, Alice has already begun her strange travels through Wonderland, and Pierre hasn't even left dry land yet. But one of the exciting things about reading (or re-reading) all these tales of adventure is that each takes us far and wide through the limitless bounds of imagination. In The Time Machine the traveller scarcely moves from the place he sits at the end of Chapter I, but his journey is no less miraculous, and Wells takes us to places that are just as wild, alien, and exotic as those experienced by Alice and Pierre.

'Curiouser' still is that the same thread follows through our next two features. The War of the Worlds brings distant travellers to our domain -- menacing though they may be -- while Dorothy's adventures in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz share with Alice a fantastical journey through a child's imagination.