Some time in Holland

What is it with Holland and time travel?

A lot of people think that the first time travel novel is The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, published in 1895.

Aside from the fuzzy logistics of what “being first” really means in time travel, the above statement is incorrect. Indeed, H.G. Wells had already published a short story called The Chronic Argonauts in 1888, thus scoring an own-goal in beating himself to the title of First Time Travel Author.

A little less self-plagiaristic is The Clock That Went Backward, a short story by Edward Page Mitchell which was published in 1881, and as far as I can tell, the ‘first’ piece of fiction involving time travel.

I’ll get round to reviewing it later, but the point I wanted to make is that the story is set in Holland; a small country with a complicated language. I can’t help but wonder why Holland was chosen as the setting for this ground-breaking piece of work!

Yes it’s true…the time2timetravel HQ is situated in Holland too, where if you search hard, you can end up in some pretty quirky places!

Dutch Clock
“Dutch Clock”. Fancy one on your wall? Image courtesy: clockmasterinc.com

And there is the “Dutch clock”. I wasn’t even aware there was such a thing until they kept popping in in various novels I’ve been reading, and here was a surprise…that the picture of a clock face used as a header on this site is actually of a Dutch clock…although I hadn’t realised it when I took the picture!

(Rather ironic…I live in Holland, and took this picture of a Dutch clock during a holiday in France!)

I don’t have a picture of the above clock in all of it’s full Dutch chronological glory (…in France 😉 ) but descriptively it could be described as a short and stumpy wall mounted grandfather clock. Or at least, one with its legs cut off (see image, right).

Given the story line of The Clock that went Backward irony again hits us in the face, in that there is a Dutch saying that the Dutch people are tall so that if the sea dikes break then they can keep their heads above the water.

Tall people, short clocks. But I guess they are not the only ones short on time!

Paul

What do you think? Leave a Reply! :)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.