If you've been around here recently you would have heard that the UK edition of How to Build a Time Machine, which is confusingly called Build Your Own Time Machine over here, is out and about with a rather smart retro cover. I've recently discovered a wonderful coincidence concerning the cover.

One chapter of the book is dedicated to Ronald Mallett, an American physics professor who has spent his life working on the general relativity and its applications to time travel. He was inspired to do this because his father died when he was a boy, and when he came across the concept of a time machine he realised that he wanted to make one of these to go back and see his dad again.

The initial idea came to young Ron while reading a comic book version of the H. G. Wells classic, The Time Machine. And here's the wonderful coincidence (thanks to tbrosz on Litopia for pointing this out). The UK cover isn't just a pastiche of the old science fiction style, it is based on a specific comic book cover.

You guessed it. That same comic that inspired Ronald Mallett also inspired the designer of my book's cover. And, as far as I can tell, it is pure coincidence. Here's the cover from www.tkinter.smig.net/ClassicsIllustrated