Book lists - Best Time Travel Novels
Inspired by the list (below) that Jeff started off (and some others he has been running recently, such as heroic fiction) I thought I'd take a stab at doing some of my own on a smaller scale. I thought since Doctor Who and Life on Mars have been making me think about the nature of time again I'd start with a list of some of the best books dealing with time travel and I'd very much like folks to suggest other titles they think should go on the list, so these first ones are only a beginning, please do send in ideas.
Basic rule is that any book nominated must contain some method of actual time travel, be it by science, mental powers, magic, accident etc, or temporal exploration/manipulation (as in Clarke and Baxter's Light of Other Days for example) or folks from one period mysteriously given a new life in another (as in Things Unborn) so, regrettably something like Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon or Ken MacLeod's The Sky Ship which have related narratives running in two different time periods would not count because there is no travel between those periods. As with Jeff's list it is open to any work which meets that criteria, regardless of whether most folk consider it to be 'SF' or not, as long as you consider it to be a good read worth recommending (because of the quality of writing or even just because of the imaginative ideas); if you have one you are not sure about then send it in anyway along with why you think it belongs on the list.
So the opening (short) list, which will hopefully grow (in no special order):
The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
The Time Ships, Stephen Baxter
The Light of Other Days, Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter
The Stainless Stee Rat Saves the World, Harry Harrison
The Technicolour Time Machine, Harry Harrison
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain
Behold the Man, Michael Moorcock
Time and Again, Jack Finney
Bring the Jubilee, Ward Moore
Timescape, Gregory Benford
Things Unborn, Eugene Byrne
Kindred, Octavia Butler
The Time Traveller's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Beauty, Sherri S Tepper
The End of Eternity, Isaac Asimov
Time Enough For Love, Robert Heinlein
The Books of Magic, Neil Gaiman et al
The Guns of the South, Harry Turtledove
Thief of Time, Terry Pratchett
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams
Not a novel, but John Crowley's novella "Great Work of Time" is unquestionably the finest exploration of time travel I've ever read (it's available in the collection Novelties and Souvenirs, which is well worth a look).
ReplyDeleteAlso, Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates.
Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons. Must Read! Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion.
ReplyDelete'nuff said.
Best time travel novel of all time: The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers.
ReplyDeleteOh totally Anubis Gates, it is a gorgeous book. And the more I think about it perhaps we need another list for short stories involving time travel as well. But then I'd need to add a list of film and TV as well, then we could have Harlan Ellison's City on the Edge of Forever in there. And Red Dwarf's unusual take on the Kennedy assassination :-)
ReplyDeleteAnd I realised I meant to add in Jonathan Carroll's The Wooden Sea to the list and missed it, but that's why we're building a list! And then checking it twice, going to find out which is naughty, nice or emitting chronoton particles...
ReplyDeleteI find it hard not to include Connie Willis in such a discussion.
ReplyDeleteI also really enjoyed Zoran Zivkovic's 'Time Gifts', and to a lesser extent Swanwick's 'Bones of the Earth'- oh, and you have to include Ken Grimwood's 'Replay'!
I find it hard not to include Connie Willis in such a discussion.
ReplyDeleteI also really enjoyed Zoran Zivkovic's 'Time Gifts', and to a lesser extent Swanwick's 'Bones of the Earth'- oh, and you have to include Ken Grimwood's 'Replay'!
Don't forget Richard Matheson's "Bid Time Farewell" from which the famous movie Somewhere in Time was adapted. Along the lines of Jack Finney's ideas of time travel being a mental discipline.
ReplyDeleteTahyhleia