"Are You in the Nineteenth Century?"

"The Chronic Argonauts."
By H. G. Wells (1866-1946).
Short story.
First publication: The Science Schools Journal (1888).
Online HERE.

"The Chronic Argonauts" was Wells's first foray into time travel fiction and is very different from his famous The Time Machine (1895):

. . . This brief story begins with a third-person account of the arrival of a mysterious inventor to the peaceful Welsh town of Llyddwdd. Dr. Moses Nebogipfel takes up residence in a house sorely neglected after the deaths of its former inhabitants.

The main bulk of the story concerns the apprehension of the simple rural folk who eventually storm the inventor's "devilish" workshop in an effort to repay supposed witchery. Nebogipfel escapes with one other person—the sympa-thetic Reverend Elijah Ulysses Cook—in what is later revealed to be a time machine.

The next part picks up with an unnamed "Author" character discovering the dazed Reverend Cook returned from unbelievable exploits after having been missing for three weeks. The remainder of the story is the Reverend's short retelling (again in the third-person) of the events that took place that night and the revelation that Nebogipfel is [SPOILERS]. (From a Wikipedia article HERE, since modified)

Resources:
- A graphic novel version of "The Chronic Argonauts" is discussed in detail HERE, from which came the illustrations accompanying this posting.
- The Time Machine recently got our attention HERE.

Category: Science fiction (time travel division)