SOME say that Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, was a genius, a man that in the 1960s foresaw a range of technological advances - from hand-held communicators (mobile phones?) to laser weapons.

But then again, he did have a military background as was probably more aware than most of the speed in which new technologies were advancing.

So let's look even further into history, right back to the 1860s, when a little known British writer was also wowing the masses with his 'fanciful' tales of the future. I speak, of course, of the brilliant H G Wells.

Time and again his novels are re-hashed by television and film producers to make a 'new and improved' version.

The Invisible Man has had several 're-vamps' and another War of the Worlds is due next year.

But one work that seemed to see little attention was The Time Machine. Apart from a poor film in 1978 it had been relatively untouched.

That was until his great-grandson, director Simon Wells, decided to give it the Hollywood treatment.

And by the look of it, you wouldn't have presumed Wells had even read the book as he has managed to completely strip the soul from this masterpiece.

The story remains the same, an inventor and his time machine travel thousands of years into the future to find mankind has regressed into two castes - hunters and prey.

But the weepy love story super-glued onto the plot and the ludicrous end sequences only work to 'cheese up' an already tired script.

Guy Pearce never makes up his mind how to play inventor Alexander Hartdegen, starting off an eccentric wimp and ending a hero, and the whole explanation is pinned on Jeremy Irons' drive-by appearance as the Uber-Morlock.

Irish songstress Samantha Mumba, making her film debut, does the best she can with her role, as does real life brother Omero, but the fact her tribe speak English, which they call the old language despite 800,000 years of evolution, is plain silly.

The sub-text of the stroy is the relationship between author and reader, how the audience is inable to change what is. The writer decides the world, the reader submissively experiences it.

Given the choice, I'd have rather experienced something other than this pointless adaptation. Read the book. CM

Pictured: Guy Pearce stars alongside Samantha Mumba in The Time Machine (PG).