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.
- The Dancer from Atlantis
Poul Anderson.
- Guardians of Time
Poul Anderson.
- Seventh Son
Orson Scott Card
First in a series about Alvin the Maker. Set in an alternate colonial America, they are written in a colloquial style which
drops the reader into a place where "witches" exiled from Cromwell's stuffy England thrive in the American wilderness, performing
everyday magic in order to get by. Alvin, the seventh son of a seventh son, has the "knack" stronger than anyone, and must learn to
battle his great enemy, the "Unmaker", to survive and fulfill his destiny. Wonderfully written. The others in the series are:
Red Prophet
Prentice Alvin
Alvin Journeyman
Heartfire
- The Devil in Velvet
John Dickson Carr List Price: $4.95 and less.
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.
- The Stone God Awakens
Philip José Farmer.
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.
- The Wind Whales of Ishmael
Philip Jose Farmer.
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.
- Time and Again
Jack Finney. List Price $12 and less.
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.
- About Time : Twelve Stories
Jack Finney. List Price: $11 and less
Some more Finney stories of time travel.
- From Time to Time : A Novel
Jack Finney List Price: $12 and less
Suffers Sequel Malaise worse than most, seeming far less a novel of a time traveler with
an urgent mission than an historians excuse to roam NY in 1912 -- but the
hero does see the Titanic safe to port.
- Then we have the Lord Darcy series from Randall Garrett:
These are set in a world where Richard the Lionheart recovered from his crossbow wound, his nephew Arthur suceeded him, and where
magic became a science under the auspices of the Church. This and the
two books to follow are tight mysteries, perfectly resolved, that allow us
to explore the Angevin Empire of the 1960s.
- The Man Who Folded Himself
David Gerrold.
How many ways can you meet yourself, coming and going in time, and what does it do to everything
else?
- Watch the North Wind Rise
Robert Graves.
In this classic of Waker time-travel, a neo-pagan future finds itself too civilized for its own good.
The Time War series by Simon Hawke follows a time agent through alternate universes where fiction is real. We think the titles tell
you everything you need to know.
- The Ivanhoe Gambit (#1)
- The Timekeeper Conspiracy (#2)
- The Pimpernel Plot (#3)
- The Zenda Vendetta (#4)
- The Nautilus Sanction (#5)
- The Khyber Connection (#6)
- The Argonaut Affair (#7)
- The Dracula Caper (#8)
- The Lilliput Legion (#9)
- The Hellfire Rebellion (#10)
- The Cleopatra Crisis (#11)
- The Six-Gun Solution (#12)
- Farnham's Freehold
Robert Heinlein.
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.
- Dragonflight
Anne McCaffrey List Price: $12.95 and less.
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 Fall of Sirius
Wil McCarthy List Price: $5.50 and less.
A recent entry in the sub-sub genre we can call "Waker time-travel": someone reaches a far
future by suspended animation.
- The Big Time
Fritz Leiber
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.
- First Dawn (The Lost Millenium #1)
Mike Moscoe List Price: $5.99 and less.
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.)
- Second Fire (The Lost Millenium #2)
Mike Moscoe List Price: $5.99 and less.
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.
- Lost Days (Lost Millenium #3)
Mike Moscoe List Price: $5.99 and less.
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.
- Behold the Man
Michael Moorcock.
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?
- Fire Margins
Lisanne Norman List Price: $6.99 and less.
By Andre Norton:
- Three in Time: A White Wolf Rediscovery Trio
Pamela Sargent & Jack Dann (Editor) List Price: $14.99 and less.
Your best source for three time travel classics:
The Winds of Time by Chad Oliver
The Year of the Quiet Sun by Wilson Tucker
There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson.
- Up the Line
Robert Silverberg.
Time itself is more of a major character here than in most of the genre. A hard-to-get classic, worth the trouble.
- Time and Again
Clifford D. Simak.
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.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Mark Twain List Price: $4.95 and less.
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.
- The Time Machine
H. G. Wells. List Price: $2.99 and less.
Here it all began, and you may be surprised to see how many of the standard motifs start here too.
- The Legion of Time
Jack Williamson.
An early and exciting entry in the professional time enforcer motif.
- Doomsday Book
Connie Willis. List Price: $6.50 and less.
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.
- Fire Watch
Connie Willis. List Price: $6.50 and less.
- To Say Nothing of the Dog: How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last
Connie Willis List Price: $23.95 and less.
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.
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.
Having followed the intrigues of Prince/King Corwin to this point, the tale takes up anew with Corwin's son, named
Merlin. Don't expect the Round Table.
