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From H.G. Wells onward, the notion of traveling in time has fascinated writers and readers alike. Paradox is often a key element, but as the field developed, the simplistic notion of killing a man's grandfather so that he would never be born has gone by the wayside. Modern time travel fiction is much more sophisticated. Don't settle for the likes of Crichton's Timeline when you can feast on so much more. |
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| Anderson, Poul |
The Dancer from Atlantis
There's nothing like an out-of-control time machine to make your day. The hero of this tale gets snatched from an ocean liner straight into another world and time, where he is expected to do great things in company with other stranded and unwitting time travelers. Not only do they have to cope with new surroundings, they first have to learn to communicate, a nice nod to reality we wish more writers would bother with.
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| Anderson, Poul |
Guardians of Time Poul Anderson Most of the Time Patrol series is out of print, alas, but well worth looking for. This was the first.
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| Carr, John Dickson |
The Devil in Velvet The noted mystery writer sends Professor Nicholas Fenton back to Restoration London to solve and maybe prevent a murder. All it takes is a pact with Satan, whom Fenton must also circumvent. A clever plot and breathtaking pacing.
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| Farmer, Philip José |
The Stone God Awakens The hero wakes from petrified suspension to find a world so far in the future that humanity is extinct, but intelligence been found by half a dozen other species.
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| Farmer, Philip José |
The Wind Whales of Ishmael The narrator of Moby Dick finds himself tranported from a wreck in the Pacific to a future so distant the very seas have dried up.
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| Finney, Jack |
Time and Again Possibly the most popular time travel story, it does not emphasize the science fiction as much as the immersion in 1880s New York, though there is some interesting twisting of time's tail as the hero tries to avoid leaving the place and girl he has come to love.
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| Finney, Jack |
From Time to Time : A Novel This one suffers Sequel Malaise worse than most, seeming far less a novel of a time traveler with an urgent mission than an historian's excuse to roam New Yprk in 1912 -- but the hero does see the Titanic safe to port.
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| Gerrold, David |
The Man Who Folded Himself How many ways can you meet yourself, coming and going in time, and what does it do to everything else? Daniel Eakins inherits a time machine and quickly discovers that fixing all the wrongs of history is not quite as easy as it sounds.
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| Graves, Robert |
Watch the North Wind Rise In this classic of Waker time-travel, a neo-pagan future finds itself too civilized for its own good. No image.
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| Hawke, Simon |
The Time War This extended series isthoroughly entertaining, especially if you've read the original books incorporated into each adventure. The series follows a time agent through alternate universes where fiction is real. We think the titles tell you everything you need to know.
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| Heinlein, Robert |
Farnham's Freehold
While an Atomic Age story of a family in its shelter catapulted into the far future when the world has recovered, this reads like the jagged pasting together of two novels: one where they establish themselves in the wilderness, and the other when they are suddenly confronted, over half the book along, with the civilization that survives far away. Interesting, but poor structure.
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| McCaffrey, Anne |
Dragonflight If you're not familiar with Pern this is a good place to start. If you know Pern, you are definitely missing out to have skipped this base volume. If you have it, give it a reread. The resolution of the plot depends entirely upon time travel.
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| McCarthy, Wil |
The Fall of Sirius A recent entry in the sub-sub genre we can call "Waker time-travel": someone reaches a far future by suspended animation and wakes up to a world completely foreign, with all the attending problems of assimilation.
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| Lieber, Fritz |
The Big Time A Hugo winner, this tight drama, almost a locked room mystery, has astonishingly never been taken to the screen. Against the background of Leiber's Change War, an R&R station outside of time picks up a team from a botched mission, still carrying the tactical nuclear device they were going to use in the Napoleonic wars.
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| Moscoe, Mike |
First Dawn (The Lost Millenium #1) Paced in the thriller tradition, a West Point cadet is picked to lead a time mission to the brink of the Neolithic, six thousand years ago, to stop a designer plague today. (Some of us have difficulty even glancing at any book which treats the term "kurgan", which means a burial mound, as a tribal name, when the scientists who study the area have other ones.) |
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| Moscoe, Mike |
Second Fire (The Lost Millenium #2) Lt. Launa O'Brien and Capt. Jack Walking Bear have to further transform their Neolithic charges, trying to prevent many brutal centuries of history that they know.
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| Moscoe, Mike |
Lost Days (Lost Millenium #3) In an absolute change of pace, O'Brien and Walking Bear get to "return to the future" -- but not the one they left, the one they've created. An unusual perspective on time altering, which normally leaves off with the traveler having done the earth-shaking deed, without looking at where it might go instead of where it was planned to go.
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| Moorcock, Michael |
Behold the Man A deep and moving novel by a classic writer, but which can be summed up as what's a time traveler to do if an historical Jesus doesn't want to follow the path to Golgotha?
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| Niven, Larry |
The Flight of the Horse
An imaginative series of stories about a hapless time agent sent back in time to procure a horse, only to return with a unicorn... These are thought-provoking not only from the standpoint of time travel, but from the perspective of change between one time and another, both culturally and physically (our hero has a difficult time with the unpolluted air of the past). Light-hearted and entertaining.
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| Norman, Lisanne |
Fire Margins
In the tradition of Andre Norton, this one combines a bond between a young human and a member of the catlike Sholan species with a quest for the Sholans' mysterious past.
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| Norton, Andre |
The Crossroads of Time
The grandmaster made time travel one of her core tropes, and made them each plausible and interesting, with that special blend of outside-in for protagonists thrown into strange and interesting places. Try these other classics as well:
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| Powers, Tim |
The Anubis Gates
A lecturer gathering background on his subject time travels from 1983 to hear a lecture by Coleridge in the 17th century. Things quickly go downhill from there when, in sort order, he runs into an Egyptian sorcerer, Gypsies, and a vivisectionist clown. If that's not enough for you, the plot manages to convincing throw in everything from magic to Knights Templar, keep everything moving at lightspeed, and neatly tuck in all the loose ends.
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| Sargent, Pamela & Jack Dann (editors) |
Three in Time: A White Wolf Rediscovery Trio Your best source for three time travel classics: The Winds of Time by Chad Oliver
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| Silverberg, Robert |
Up the Line Time itself is more of a major character here than in most of the genre. A hard-to-get classic, worth the trouble.
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| Simak, Clifford D. |
Time and Again Most time travel involves people from our near future -- virtual contemporaries -- going into the past. This tale begins in a galaxy ruled by the ultimate corporation, when a hapless student is caught in the circularity of finding the book on time travel he has yet to write. |
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| Turtledove, Harry |
The Guns of the South
Critically panned but popular nonetheless, this is both time travel and alternate history, treading familiar territory in ensuring the South wins the Civil War, this time using modern weapons brought from the future. This book is also found in our alternate history section.
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| Twain, Mark |
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Lest we forget another early classic, which established the theme of a little science going a long way to making a man a wizard in past eras. Not too serious, with the Twain bite of satire.
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| Wells, H.G. |
The Time Machine Here it all began, and you may be surprised to see how many of the standard motifs start here too.
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| Williamson, Jack |
Legion of Time An early and exciting entry in the professional time enforcer motif. Out of print, still available used.
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| Willis, Connie |
Doomsday Book Wills made her reputation on this story of the true horror of being caught in the days of the Black Death, of the loss not of population statistics, but people the reader cares about with the protagonist. |
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| Willis, Connie |
Fire Watch One of the best science fiction novellas ever written. Willis has made time travel her forte, and does it very, very well. Set during World War II, you will never see the ending coming. |
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| Willis, Connie |
Lincoln's Dreams While not a time travel book per se, it does definitely connect two times, two people, and the lingering echoes of tragedy and regret reaching through time. Haunting and beautifully written, you'll remember this one a long time. |
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| Willis, Connie |
To Say Nothing of the Dog: How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last Something of a romp, as the title (taken from Three Men in a Boat) ought to warn you, about a time agent on the edge of collapse in Edwardian England. |
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| Yolen, Jane |
The Devil's Arithmetic
Haunting and beautiful, this YA takes a young Jewish girl back to 1940s Poland and the death camps at Auschwitz. Though she has been inundated her entire life by tales of the Holocaust from her parents and grandparents, young Hannah doesn't really "get it" until she lives it firsthand. This book won the National Book Award and was made into a 1999 movie of the same title. |
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| Zelazny, Roger |
The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles Roger Zelazny hit on a winning formula with The Chronicles of Amber series: heroes who move through alternate universes at will, have a large Machievellian family warring with each other for power, cliffhanger endings to each book, and complete confusion if you miss one. The worlds are often brilliantly imagined, the plot terrifyingly intricate but plausible, the family personalities predictable and the series' weakest point. This volume includes all 10 of the books:
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(Time Wars, No 6)
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