Great Illustrated Classics is a series of books that redacts/abridges novels so they are “easier for kids to read.” And apparently, more palatable for younger readers. Who are going to be damned confused if they ever read Shirley Bogart’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, which won’t have the far future mini adventure with advanced humans, that takes place after the far future “last days of Earth” scene. (My memory is hazy on the exact location of the scene but I know it was added into the book and the knowledge of this is kind of enraging.)
Here’s why it makes me angry: imagine you’ve read the Great Illustrated Classics version, and you expect to read something similar when you read the unabridged edition. Imagine what happens when the scene you expected doesn’t show up. (It also won’t show up in any of the movie adaptations!) You try to explain there is a missing scene and you are further confused when you’re told that there isn’t a missing scene, and the other person fails to recognize the extra scene you’ve described. Imagine the embarrassment, imagine the frustration as you try to find an edition that has that extra scene. The extra scene that exists only in the Great Illustrated Classics edition of The Time Machine.
There is a missing scene of sorts in The Time Machine, but it was written by H.G. Wells. This is the “Gray Man” scene where the Time Traveler discover that the Eloi have devolved into rabbits and the Morlocks have somehow become crabs. It is extremely horrifying. Way more horrifying than the scene with the red Sun and the ocean with the floppy thing on the shore. (Though that was pretty creepy. Creepy enough that I still remember it.)
So basically, Shirley Bogart put her The Time Traveler fan fic into the book she was adapting. Why? Who knows, maybe the ending was too sad, and the editors thought younger readers would be traumatized by it. (Funny story: At the point where I received a bunch of books from the Great Illustrated Classics series, including the Time Machine, I was already traumatized by the movie adaptations.)
My experience was the reverse of the situation I just described, but was no less enraging. See, I had already seen the movies, and I had already read the unabridged edition of The Time Machine. So here I am reading this book, and suddenly there’s a completely new scene and encounter where the Time Traveler encountered a future human community who are pretty annoyed that he has a time machine! (From what I recall. Bear in mind this is something that happened waay back in the dim past of my childhood.)
I spent childhood and much of my adolescence trying to figure out where that extra scene came from because it never occurred to my ridiculous brain that the answer was: Shirley Bogart added in the scene, because to my understanding at the time that was plagiarism and plagiarism was bad. (Yes I know that’s not actually plagiarism now. My thinking was very black and white as a kid. And also that adaptations may have stuff added in or taken out. This is why I tend to hate them.)
However, I’m still pissed about it. Because I was apparently also the only person who knew about this extra scene. (I’m sure that lots of kids read Great Illustrated Classics. However, I didn’t know anyone who did, and I was mostly asking adults about it. Because I was terrible at social.) Whenever I mentioned it, I would get weird looks because no, there’s no scene like that in The Time Machine! (No, of course not. That scene was written by Shirley Bogart.) Now, via this confusion I did find out about the “The Gray Man” but I don’t feel this is equal recompense for the aggravation of an unnecessary added scene.
Yeah. Not only is it an added scene, it also does nothing to further the plot. It’s a little would-be optimistic scene that goes “look somewhere there are still people!” but does nothing to enhance the overall story. In this sense, it may be incorrect to describe the additional scene as fan fic. One of the positive things about fan fic is that fan fic can expand the setting, and speculate on situations a character may encounter. The only reason the scene exists is to attempt to make a very grim book slightly more optimistic, and may I mention it doesn’t really do that very well? It was just more sadness because one of the themes of the book is that everything is subject to entropy and that includes human civilization.
So, for your TL:DR. I hate Great Illustrated Classics with particular disgruntlement directed toward Shirley Bogart’s adaptation of The Time Machine which has an extra scene added in that does nothing for the plot.
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