Just finished reading an all-time favorite, Christopher Priest's "scientific romance" homage to H.G. Wells, The Space Machine. I have been reading a battered paperback since about 1978, but a few years back I went online and bought a first U.S. edition (on the right). I started reading it a couple of weeks ago, then learned that Bullet was going to meet Priest in person as a convention in Scotland. I packed the book up and sent it off to be signed by the master himself - and unfortunately immediately got interested in Priest's other works and ended up buying three signed books from a SF bookshop in Surrey one night when I couldn't sleep (nobody tell Jamie, okay?) The left picture is of one of them, a first U.K. edition Space Machine by Faber & Faber, also signed by Priest. I would go on about how much I like it - it's small and yet slightly wider than your average small book, and just is an unusually comfortable and cozy size - but that would make me sound really strange, so I won't.
The book is a "scientific romance" which involves a man and woman from 1893 England accidentally getting carried away to Mars on a time machine, which can also travel through space. They accidentally get dumped onto Mars during preparations for the Martians' invasion of the Earth, and after numerous adventures, return on board the invaders' projectiles just in time to play a key (but uncredited) role in The War of the Worlds. I'm sure Wells' WotW has been fleshed out by numerous books (such as Gabriel Mesta's recent The Martian War) but it can't have been done much better than this. This book is entirely consistent with Wells' original, and I remember many enjoyable evenings reading it while enjoying Jeff Wayne's just-out musical version of the story.
I just love this book - the romance between Edward and Amelia really gets me. I can remember Amelia and C.S. Forester's Lady Barbara Hornblower being pretty much my models for what a lady and what a romance should be when I was oh, fourteen years old or so (Princess Leia was in there somewhere as well, but we're not going to go there). The book is well-written, and I just really like the principal character, an uptight, overly dignified (sound familiar?) Englishman. At one point towards the beginning of the book he has difficulty relaxing in Amelia's presence and she finally says "you are so formal, Edward!" "I can't help it," he apologizes. "It is what I am used to." When I was fourtenn or thereabouts, that sounded very familiar.
Anyway, just a thoroughly enjoyable book. I highly recommend it to anyone.