6 Great Short Novels of Science Fiction

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MORE YEARS AGO than I care to count, an uncle of mine who had a propensity for picking up books on second-hand counters presented me with a badly dogeared volume, The Time Machine. The author’s name was Wells—H. G. Wells. I had never heard of him nor had I ever dreamed of time machines; but I sat down to look the book over, and before I knew it it was three hours later and I had had my first experience with science fiction. Literally, it was like travel through time itself, so imperceptibly did the hours pass.

Two things about this book have stayed with me through the years. I admired, first, the brilliant sweep of its imagination, and, second, its odd length. The Time Machine is longer than a short story—even a “long” one —and considerably shorter than a regular novel. Detective stories I was reading in those days were usually at least twice as long as Mr. Wells’ masterpiece and generally about half as exciting. This seemed, even then, to point a moral: there are not many tales that need more than novelette treatment for satisfactory development, just as there are not many really meaningful, idea-rich stories that can be told in less than novelette length.

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