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Study 132 - The New Accelerator (Patreon)

Published:
2025-06-05 17:50:49
Edited:
2025-06-05 17:51:40
Imported:
2025-06
Tags:

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Content

H.G. Wells breaks into the energy drink market with his short story The New Accelerator. We've consumed it! Hear our review!

Special thanks to reader Greig Johnson!

Next up: Feedback and Royal Jelly by Roald Dahl

Comments

Newk

Nice to have Greg reading again. I rushed home to save time and listen to this episode!

HRPrice

“We rush things to save time, but what people do with the time they save? Watch another half hour of a tv show? Is that worth it?” *leans in* *leans in closer* *leans in even closer* yesssssssss

HRPrice

I have an awful feeling I’d enter slowed time and get very, very bored. I’d have to remember to bring a book with sturdy, low-friction pages, just in case

David Capune

Not trying to excuse the clear racism that Wells has, but what he could have meant by Jews “being men in their teens” could have to do with a Jewish children having a Bar/Bat Mitzvah at 13 and thus being adults in their teens, at least symbolically (and in previous times legally). I’m not Jewish myself so please excuse any unintentional ignorance, but I do have have a lot of religious studies under my belt and have attended plenty of Bar Mitzvahs myself to know! This all said, no idea what the swipe at Asian people is for!

Jb Lee

On YouTube you can find TALES OF TOMORROW'S rather effective adaptation of Arthur C Clarke's ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD, in which you get that scifi device that surrounds the user with a temporal field. I also think it's the 'inspiration" for TWILIGHT ZONE's Stopwatch stories. After that, check out the keywords LONE RANGER QUICKSILVER and witness the insane 1966 cartoon version of The Lone Ranger, protosteampunk, and the villain Quicksilver, who has an accelerator that makes Wells' potion seem slow and feeble. For a while.

Jennifer DeFord

I'm so excited that "Royal Jelly" is coming up! Like a fair few weird stories that made it into Alfred Hitchcock anthologies, I read this story a bit too young and have never forgotten it.

Clyde Duensing III

Reading this story brought to mind the old Star Trek episode "Wink of an Eye" in which aliens that move many times faster than humans take over the Enterprise. Ultimately of course Kirk gets accelerated and later Spock and together they save the Enterprise. Several specific things in this story appeared in that episode, sound perception being changed, the aliens sound like the buzzing of an insect to the unaccelerated, the aliens move too fast to be seen, and when in that state, everyone else on the Enterprise is shown as standing still in mid-motion. There is also the hint of super fast aging when the alien woman, who of course Kirk seduces, tells him that people like him who have been artificially accelerate age quickly and "burn out" when damaged. Thank you Mr. Wells. Once again I'm reminded that you invented everything when it comes to sci-fi.

Professor Murder

When the initial passage was read by Greig Johnson, my first reaction was, "So he invented cocaine?"

Professor Murder

But more seriously, that the ill effects of the New Accelerator are glossed over with the ending is what makes the piece feel rushed or just a concept instead of a story. As bad as the notion of super speed, invisible criminals are, more my mind went to workers just being made to mainline the drug near constantly to further increase efficiency to boost profits, because that is where we are at.

Kiubez

One of my favorite plays on the “stopped/slowed time” trope is the 2006 film Cashback. It’s less sci-fi in that there is no technology or potion to create the effect but the kid who learns how to stop time uses his ability for art. He stops the world around him and can then spend hours doing life drawings of things and people in mid-motion. He gets really creepy with it at times, but the idea is beautiful.

Jim Cannon

This reminded me in structure of _Food of the Gods_ which also has a miracle technology that once ingested can fundamentally alter the fabric of human society and Wells shows all the build up ... but ultimately none of the payoff. The book ends before anything "cool" really happens.

Jim Cannon

Flash and Quicksilver obviously get all the perks of superspeed and none of the drawbacks, but there actually was a superhero who got the short end of the stick. In the 1960s Tower Comics published a book called T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, about UN operatives who were just kind of working stiff type superheroes, and one of them was a guy named Lightning. He wore a bright yellow suit that gave him all the super speed abilities, but it also aged him along with it, just like the characters in the Wells story. So while everyone else on the team was a swinging 1960s Mad Man type of character, Lightning was physically in his 80s (chronologically in his 20s) and risking death by heart attack whenever he leapt into action to save people or fight commies or whatever.

REO Jackwagon

Is The Girl and the Gold Watch real or was that a Manimal episode?

It's a Ghost.

This story/episode made me think of the Sex Criminals comic book series. Here's the Wikipedia synopsis: "Suzie, a librarian, and Jon, an actor, meet at a party and end up sleeping together. Later, they are shocked to discover that they share the ability to freeze time when they orgasm. As their relationship develops and their sexual histories are explored, they decide to rob the bank where Jon works in order to save Suzie's endangered library."

Anne Ominous

That last line predicts the whole silicon valley 'move fast and break things' ethos...Wells is truly the father of sci-fi

Ryan Thomas

Dr. Honeydew and Beaker are at it again!

Bret Kramer

Dare I suggest we call this month “Strange Brew-n”?

Jeffrey Kahrs

I just got archive 404's complete download of weird tales. Anyone know a good index online? Thanks

Jared Ransom

Wasn't there a twilight zone episode that ends with a guy who just wants to read and study being left in a world that is stopped or empty and he steps on his glasses. Ending with him sobbing on the steps of a Library cradling his broken spectacles saying "there was finally time..." over and over again? Or am I hallucinating Mandela effects again?

Gideon Falcon

I think most millennials can sympathize with Chad, here: given the power to stop time, which could be used for SO MANY nefarious purposes, our first impulse would be to go take a nap.

Gideon Falcon

Chad... LIED in an episode!!? My hopes and aspirations are crushed! How could he betray us so??

Paula Wyche

The Futurama episode "300 Big Boys" is this trope's finest hour.

Ben Gilbert

Yes, The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything was a TV movie starring Robert Hays and based on a John D. MacDonald novel.

Richard Upton Sinclair Lewis Pickman

Agree with all the happiness expressed about hearing from Greig again! Channeling NDT here, but Chris got it more or less right in his observation about the heat generated when moving fast through our atmosphere. The story, not so much. When you move really fast the issue is less the friction than it is the compression. When you move your arm like that, the resistance you are feeling is the pressure built up in the air that just can’t get out of the way quickly enough. The extreme example is something re-entering the atmosphere which involves huge amounts of compression, huge amounts of pressure, and lots of heat. Why be pedantic about the physics in a story that ignores so many other factors? Why not!

Kidz Bop Nine Inch Nails

Kind of reminds me of "The Jaunt" by Stephen King. Toootally different feel from this one (downright horrific vs rather lighthearted), but another "what happens if someone is able to perceive time differently than everyone else?" type of story.

Karl Haikara

Sometime you should cover some karl edward wagner Kane stories, they're really incredible I've been covering them on my podcast. They're all available for cheap on Kindle

ESTY

Chad once asked that we *forgive* Greg for his many crimes; but during this intro I couldn’t help muttering to myself “sooo many crimes…!”

Graham Pilling

Chad mentioned it only in passing but Re. animals perceiving time differently, here's a great video on that very topic: https://youtu.be/Gvg242U2YfQ?si=djJRbIswls3969yX Basically we're all lifeforms are running at different 'clock speeds' so we do appear to move very slowly to birds, squirrels, etc. I thought about this for days after learning it... Another great ep, chaps and lovely to hear Greig as always.

Phil Jensen

Not sure if anyone mentioned it or not, as far as time stoppage, you can't forget the 1980 TV movie "The Girl, The Gold Watch, & Everything" with Robert Hayes and Pam Dawber. Okay REO Jackwagon beat me to it...never thought I'd type that sentence ;)

Falconhoof

Agreed. It was probably the first time I encountered the trope, so every subsequent version seems like a rip off to me (especially the quicksilver scene from days of future past). It's also one of my favourite episodes of futurama and blew me away the first time I saw it. Fry drinking coffee seems like such an inconsequential B-story, until the end of the episode when the different storylines all come together