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Science fiction books about time travel
SammyF
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hello H/A,
I'm looking for recommendations for good books centering around the topic of traveling through time. Specifically, I'd like one that uses the modern age as its frame of reference and which justifies the ability of time-travel through some scientific explanation. (By which I mean to say that I'm not interested in a book about an elven wizard who uses magic to transport a knight, two dwarves and a gnome back in time to fight a dragon who ate a village of hobbits last week; neither am I interested in Star Trek fan fiction where adult Wesley Crusher slingshots a shuttlecraft around a red dwarf star's corona so that he can travel back to when he was in Star Fleet Academy so that he can warn his past self that the cute little co-ed sophomore living on his floor is a dirty little liar when she claims she's on birth control -- even if I do love Will Wheaton).
Any other suggestions are welcome* however! Thanks in advance guys!
*Except Time Traveler's Wife.
I'm looking for recommendations for good books centering around the topic of traveling through time. Specifically, I'd like one that uses the modern age as its frame of reference and which justifies the ability of time-travel through some scientific explanation. (By which I mean to say that I'm not interested in a book about an elven wizard who uses magic to transport a knight, two dwarves and a gnome back in time to fight a dragon who ate a village of hobbits last week; neither am I interested in Star Trek fan fiction where adult Wesley Crusher slingshots a shuttlecraft around a red dwarf star's corona so that he can travel back to when he was in Star Fleet Academy so that he can warn his past self that the cute little co-ed sophomore living on his floor is a dirty little liar when she claims she's on birth control -- even if I do love Will Wheaton).
Any other suggestions are welcome* however! Thanks in advance guys!
*Except Time Traveler's Wife.
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link to full text: http://ieng9.ucsd.edu/~mfedder/zombies.html
I will keep an eye on this thread because I really want to read some good time travel stories.
The only novel that I can think of is the classic novella The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
About half the action takes place in the roughly now era, though the time traveling originates from the far future, so I'm not sure if that fits your frame of reference criteria, depending on directionality.
But seriously, you should read those anyway if you enjoy sci fi + time travel + just about anything else.
Not a book, but my husband has been trying to get me to watch Primer for about three years, and I just haven't sat down to it. I think he was under the impression that it was a much older movie than it actually is, but that's probably because according to wikipedia it had an extremely low budget. I thought it was based on a book but I appear to be wrong. It is apparently the sort of movie you need to watch twice.
Anyway, if I think of anything that was actually what you asked for I'll let you know, but the movie is apparently very good and might kill some time.
Holy shit...
Twice is an understatement. Prime is so complicated I honestly don't think anyone would be able to figure it out on their own.
I don't want to give anything away but this is the correct response. Read. This. Story.
and Primer was a great movie also highly recommended by me :^:
Scratching your head enough to draw blood is also appropriate.
Listen to this lady. She knows what's up.
The Hyperion books (though not modern, so not exactly what you're after) are excellent, and Primer is one of my favorite movies.
There is also this little book I read in highschool called Einstein's Dreams and it's not actually about time travel per se, but about various alternate realities where time itself functions differently on a fundamental level. It's pretty interesting.
That's the best I can do, sorry!
I... ow. But cool. But ow.
If you don't mind juvenile sci-fi, the book Danger Quotient (which doesn't even appear to be on Wikipedia) is about an 18 year old travelling back in time to find out why survivors of a nuclear war aren't living as long as predicted (in a 12 Monkeys sort of fashion, I suppose).
The "Door into Summer" and "By His Bootstraps", also Heinlein.
"The End of Eternity", Asimov
The Time Patrol series, Poul Anderson
This is a hesitating recommendation, but "Pastwatch" by Orson Scott Card. It's great as long as you aren't aware of why he wrote the story or what he's trying to say.
This list is extremely incomplete, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_travel_science_fiction
EDIT: Bah, beat'd. Stupid job taking my attention away.
And the video game.
OT, I have a short story compilation book that is rather good, traveling through time, time and dimensions, etc. I believe its called Time Wars, I'll go check my bookshelf to be sure.
I read for 40 pages and then threw it across the room.
the forever war (relativity is sorta like time travel. amazing book)
I guessed what was happening when the song came on.
What the hell happened in 1972?
I was just going to recommend this. The story introduced me to Stephen Baxter, since I was already a fan of Wells' classic. It basically takes The Time Machine as the starting point of a grander story taking the traveler off into distant times past and future, utilizing modern (at the time) theories about time travel.
Timeline was the last truly good Crichton novel.
Nothing, the story was written before that and Heinlein was feeling pessimistic.
(I assume you're talking about the "forced labor" line.)
That, along with Manifold: Space, are his two best books. The two of them are certainly in my top 5 sci-fi books of all time. His later books are kind of weak in comparison.
God, I've read that entire trilogy, and yet can't remember a damn thing about them. Even reading the plot summaries on Wiki, I'm coming up blank.
Came to make the same recommendation, and also balked at your modern age comment...
Joe Haldeman is a fabulous writer.
The worst part of the first 40 pages is - aside from providing a frame for where the story starts - it doesn't really go anywhere. If you're not interested in history too much the portion until they actually arrive at the ITC offices may be a bit slow as well, since it basically handles historical background and the geography of the book's location as well as physics that ventures into science fiction to actually make the time travel plausible.
Once they actually go back in time (or however you want to explain Chrichton's use of a multiverse where they're not actually time travelling) the book is inarguably better.
Traub's death basically disintegrates after the book shifts to the team in the modern day. Everything it brings up never needs to be referenced later in the story. You could start with Johnson and the team working in France and excise everything that came before and only lose an irrelevant history of Doniger's made up company.
Whajah?
Yeah I made the mistake of only giving this story about 90% of my complete attention, and of course by the end I was saying "Wait....what?"
Good question! I'm trying to review philosophies and theories about time travel as expressed by multiple authors in the science fiction genre, and it's easiest to focus on the similarities and differences between multiple authors' theories when time-travel itself is the only theory or paradigm of ideas for which they require the reader's suspension of disbelief. A tongue in cheek example: the narrative of Back to the Future requires the audience to believe (a) that a crazy but harmless scientist in his garage turned one of the biggest commercial automotive failures of the American 20th Century into a time machine, and (b) that because of the continuity of time, the actions of a time traveler can alter the future in complex (but theoretically predictable) ways.
But what if we add a third premise? (c) The car really is just a car, but Doc Brown is actually an archmage! While in abstract that would seem like it could only make the story more bitchin', it also requires an extra leap of imagination on the part of the audience -- not only does time-travel exist, but so does magic. But adding in the possibility of magic would also allow for magical explanations and solutions for the trials of Marty McFly. Likewise, if it were to turn out that Doc Brown himself really were from a future where a bunch of unimaginable technologies even more advanced than time-travel existed, it can potentially create the same problem, since any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.
Hence my initially-limited selection. I probably will read Hyperion Cantos at some point just because it's been so-strongly recommended.
So anyway this thread is fantastic and you all are fantastic and everything is fantastic. Thanks for the recommendations, everyone, and thanks in advance for any more which might be forthcoming.
I didn't hate them, either, mind you. They felt kind of like Gordon Dickson's scifi, or the worse Orson Scott Card- very character focused, but with characters that I don't particularly like, in a setting that just doesn't hit me where it matters.
likewise, i thought it was boring
I haven't read the former yet, but it is on my shelf and waiting and I read the Moorcock book ages ago and enjoyed it.
Shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia:
About the Doomsday Book:
And Behold the Man:
I'll throw in a recommendation for Bones of the Earth, by Michael Swanwick. It's about paleontologists given the ability to time travel by a mysterious group (aliens, I think). That might void your criterion, but he doesn't emphasize it much, and the book does have some interesting stuff to say about "philosophies and theories" of time travel. It's a pretty good book, especially if you're a scientist. Not his best work, but worth a read.