Morlock Night - K.W.Jewter

By Catherine Stiles

Morlock Night is an imagined sequel to H.G.Wells’ sci-fi classic, The Time Machine. Written in the late 70’s it imagines the consequences of the Morlocks of the future obtaining the time machine and returning to Victorian London to wreak havoc and attempt to overthrow humanity. Its central character is Edwin Hocker, who was a silent member of the party to whom the machine’s inventor told his story about his adventures in the distant future. He is now, on his way home from hearing the tale, about to have his scepticisms removed as he gets swept up in the resistance to the Morlock invasion.

How the film of The Time Machine imagines the Morlocks

This premise seemed to me a fairly interesting idea; Wells imagined the societal split between the rich elite and the poor working classes going to extremes, and I imagined I would see the consequences of having the ultimate underground working class fight back against its origins.

I was wrong. It ignores the themes of Wells’ novel completely, and reduces the Morlocks to primitive fighting animals with a martial structure.

What I read was a strange and poorly executed amalgamation of several existing stories and tropes that never seemed to gel. As well as taking characters and events from Wells’ story, Jewter throws Arthurian legend into the mix, with an immortal Merlin sending Hocker on quests, and an Arthur who is constantly resurrected whenever England and English values are in danger. This addition was simply mashed into the main story-arc of fighting off the Morlocks for no apparent reason other than the author liked the stories of King Arthur.  The two stories are forced to connect, but it isn’t done so organically, he never gives you any grounding in the connection, he simply has Merlin state that there is a connection and expects the reader to go along with it. This lack of conviction gives the whole novel the feel of something very contrived, and doesn’t give the reader any cause or ability to suspend their disbelief and accept the premise of the novel.

That wasn’t the end of Jewter’s mixing, as an Atlantean submarine makes a surprise appearance in the London sewers, which were, of course, all part of Atlantis’ trade routes during the height of their civilisation. The worst part of this one is that not only is it tossed in carelessly, but the link never goes anywhere. It is not an integral part of the mystery, it’s just an arbitrary connection with existing legend, which is more detrimental to the story’s credibility than it is convincing.

The Time Machine from the film adaptation of Wells' novel.

This is all thrown in with the idea of time collapsing and eras merging into each other, which is poorly executed. He doesn’t set out any parameters or lore about time, just states that it is collapsing as an excuse to jump between a London which is Morlock overrun and a time just before the invasion is executed without any explanation or even acknowledgement of its happening. This makes the whole novel very confusing, leaving the reader unsure of what can and can’t happen with time and leading to huge plot holes later on in the story. For example, Excalibur (yes, the legendary sword of Arthur is an important part of the story) has its power weakened by the fact that Merlin’s enemies have brought 3 copies from other times to the present, meaning that four swords are in existence and its power is split between them. Hocker has to reunite all 4 swords and combine them to form the true Excalibur, however, he discovers that the Morlocks have taken the copies to the distant future from whence they came, but Excalibur is still weakened. This turn of events completely rejects the premise from which they started! Excalibur is weaker because copies of the true sword all exist in the same time, but if they have been removed from that time then he is left with only the one true sword. There should be no need to combine them. This is one of the major problems that Jewter has throughout the novel: without a structure which regulates what you can and can’t do with time travel, the plot falls apart and it loses all credibility.

It is not just the content which is weak in the novel, but the whole narrative style has the same sense of being contrived as the plot itself. His exposition is all very convenient. For example, when a new character is introduced, Hocker will say something along the lines of: ‘My God! But you’re (insert name and entire life story, with special emphasis on how his background relates to current events here)”. This is not only lazy writing, but also makes for some unnatural exchanges of dialogue which distances the reader. Furthermore, he attempts to adopt the narrative voice H. G. Wells, which fails because it just seems unnatural and unrealistic. He has some misguided attempts at period conversation which includes random expressions of imperialist views which are totally irrelevant to events at that point, and prefacing several exchanges with period clichés such as ‘I say …’

The novel is also permeated with a series of unnecessary events, and could easily be 50 pages shorter if Jewter had edited out superfluous exchanges. There are several discussions about precisely where the exposition or explanation of events will take place, which serve only to slow the narrative pace to the point of boring the reader and dragging out events gratuitously.

I had such high expectations for this novel, but it disappointed them all, and I can honestly say that I would struggle to find something positive to say about it. Its plot is just a strange mash-up of existing stories that don’t work together, and it is poorly written.