Enrique Gaspar ~7 hr read

A Spanish inventor builds the Anacronópete, a time-travelling vessel that flies backward through history, predating Wells's Time Machine by eight years.

Enrique Gaspar's 1887 novel is a landmark of early science fiction, arguably the first story to feature a purpose-built time machine, told with Spanish wit and zarzuela flair. Inventive, funny, historically pioneering. Read it for a foundational time-travel adventure that beat H. G. Wells to the punch.

In its time

Published in 1887, during the 1880s, lost races and dying earths.

Reading it

~7 hr read (a novel-length work, settle in).

Illustrated by

Francesc Gómez Soler