In 1895, H.G. Wells began his classic first masterpiece The Time Machine with a short lecture on the fourth dimension: Time. Clumsy as this was literarily, it was necessary to ‘preload’ the story for his audience. Every time travel story since hasn’t had to bother. Wells was a scientist. He felt it necessary to scaffold his tale with Science. He could have written a fairy tale in which his hero goes to the future. Or a Dickensian ghost story could have revealed what was to come. Or it could have been (wait for it)…a dream. But the end result would have been less convincing, as the early SF and fantasy writers of the previous century are to us today. If logic and reason are the underpinning of your way of thinking, they are much more convincing than any fancy, no matter how well-constructed.
In the 1920s and 30s, science fiction finally caught up with Wells. The Pulps were full of stories with “Dimension” in the title. Murray Leinster, the Dean of Science Fiction, for instance, wrote two: “The Fifth Dimensional Catapult” (Astounding, January 1931) and its sequel, “The Fifth Dimensional Tube” (Astounding, January 1933), both typical entries for the period. A scientist creates a machine that allows him to cross the dimensions, only to be attacked by weird creatures known as the Ragged Men. It shouldn’t be surprising that this kind of tale found its way into the Lovecraftian fold, largely through Frank Belknap Long, who would become predominately a science fiction writer in the 1940s and 50s.
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