Help Wanted!

[realthog]

I've been asked to write a chapter on time-travel stories for an academic book about the subgenres of science fiction, and naturally I've been making notes on books/stories I'd be wise to include. There are plenty of obvious candidates, from The Time Machine through A Connecticut Yankee to The Time Traveler's Wife, but I was wondering if some of you folk could help me by suggesting gems I might otherwise all too easily overlook.

Kids' and YA books are eligible alongside adult ones (hello, Ms L'Engle, and you too, Mr Kipling), but the books/stories must have some significance in terms of either fame or their bringing of something interesting and new to the time-travel corpus. I'm going to be an elitist prig and discount entirely novels produced as elements of TV, gaming or movie franchises, although by all means suggest relevant movies or games. Timeslip romances (like Richard Matheson's Somewhere in Time) are certainly within my remit.

I'd be really grateful for your help, and as a token of my appreciation will be only too glad to raise a glass of beer on your behalf . . . Hell, I'm no scrooge: make that two glasses of beer!

Comments

[charlesatan.livejournal.com]

There is the short story "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Thanks -- I hadn't thought of that. You wouldn't know offhand any collections/anthologies in which it appears, would you? Not to worry if not -- I can easily dig the info out myself.

[oneminutemonkey.livejournal.com]

Jack Finney's Time And Again springs to mind almost immediately.
So does his short story, "The Love Letter." I guess in general, Finney really brought something new and interesting and memorable to the idea of romance across time.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. I'm au fait with the Finney novels, but wouldn't have thought of the story. You wouldn't know offhand any collections/anthologies in which it appears, would you? Not to worry if not -- I can easily dig the info out myself.

[marshallpayne1.livejournal.com]

"Vintage Season" (1946) by Henry Kuttner and Catherine L. Moore is a favorite of mine. Silverberg liked it so much he wrote a sequel of sorts. I'm sure you know all this, just mentioning it. I love decadent time-travel stories, and to my knowledge this is the first.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I'd definitely got the story on my list, but not the quasi-sequel. Is the latter any good or have anything new to say? I'm reluctant to commit myself to reading it only to discover it's one of Silverberg's plods.

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

Kage Baker's entire The Company series, starting with In the Garden of Iden. 7, 8 books?

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I have the first of these on the pile already. Doubt I'm going to have tiome to plough through the whole lot, though.

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

What about Philip K. Dick's The Minority Report? Not exactly time travel, but sort of a view into future time?

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Hm. An interesting suggestion. I know the (not very good) movie, of course, but I guess I'd better go stick my nose into the novel.

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

Last one from me tonight, which I'm sure will relieve your mind. Various and sundry Heinleins, featuring that traveler Lazarus Long (Time Enough for Love, Number of the Beast, To Sail the Sunset), and Heinlein's juvenile Time for the Stars, which is travel at faster than light, and while not strictly time-traveling, does bring up the topic of communication when a ship is zooming away at FTL with a telepathic twin on board and one at home on Earth to receive.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Lazarus didn't time travel, did he? He just lived a long time, unless I'm completely forgetting my Heinlein. (I've read Methuselah's Children, Time Enough for Love, Number of the Beast but not To Sail the Sunset.)

while not strictly time-traveling

Them's the ones I have to be careful to avoid, as otherwise I end up with an infinite list.

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

Eh. I'll assume you already have 1632 and Star Trek IV (and ST:TOS's "City on the Edge of Forever", plus the TNG episode[s] with Data's head) on your list, and suggest Moonheart by Charles de Lint.

I'll probably have more once I'm thinking about something entirely unrelated.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought of 1632 (confess I'd never even heard of it); I've put an order in to the library.

Moonheart's a good notion -- I think I even have a copy in the house!

[bondo-ba.livejournal.com]

Well, at the risk of being obvious, I think Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" is important if you're looking at short work. It created a whole genre of paradox fiction.

Swanwick's "Radiant Doors" might be worth a look as well.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

The Bradbury was obviously among the first on the list. (There was a bloody awful movie version of it, too.)

Thanks for tipping me off about the Swanwick.

[(Anonymous)]

How about Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce? The growing poignancy and meeting at the end are powerful examples of what the concept makes possible, although whether the story is actually one of time travel is never made clear. Incidentally, Moondial by Helen Cresswell has a similar atmosphere, though is less notable beyond perhaps the fact that it was also adapted for the BBC.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I'd better go look at Tom's Midnight Garden -- been a while since I read it. Thanks for the reminder.

[desayunoencama.livejournal.com]

Connie Willis, Connie Willis, Connie Willis!

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Yes I know, yes I know, yes I know!

[jongibbs.livejournal.com]

How about Terry Pratchett's Night Watch (in my opinion his best book)?

Here's a review I found online: http://www.rambles.net/pratchett_nwatch02.html

Hope that helps :)

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the reminder -- I hadn't thought of this one. It's one of my fave Pratchetts too.

[txtriffidranch.livejournal.com]

To be a complete bastard, I'm going to recommend the short story "Time Travel for Pedestrians" from Again, Dangerous Visions. I've read a lot of time travel stories, but not one with a stickshift quite like the one used here.

Very seriously, also consider the possibilities of involuntary time travel, as presented in Lovecraft's "The Shadow Out of Time". You could write whole Ph.D theses out of that one story alone.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Oh, jeez: Wonder how I'm going to track down the Nelson story . . .

The Lovecraft's a good idea. My only problem is I find HPL totally unreadable. I'll have to see if there's a way round this . . .

[thisplacehere.livejournal.com]

You may already have these on youre list, but I thought of: Ken Grimwood's Replay; Gregory Benford's Timescape; Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man; Julian May's Saga of Pliocene Exile; Terry Pratchett's Johnny and the Bomb. And I'm sure there's an Edith Nesbit book with a time-travel element, but I can't remember which one it is...

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Replay is very much on my list! A few years back I wrote the intro for a German reissue of the book. Timescape was perhaps the first title I jotted down: it's a book I love, and I'm glad of the excuse to reread it! I'm not going to reread the May! -- I quite enjoyed it, 'way back when, but four fat vols is a bit much to contemplate. Thanks for the reminder, though: I recall enough of the quartet for the necessary sentence or two. Guess I'd better pull Johnny and the Bomb off the shelf; I've not read it and didn't realize time travel was involved.

Have you any idea if the original novella version of "Behold the Man" is in print anywhere? I must have read it half a dozen times in my youth -- in its first New Worlds publication no less! -- but my copy has long gone.

[coth.livejournal.com]

Surprised no one has mentioned Heinlein's By His Bootstraps - surely the ur-time-travel story of them all? - even if only to make sure you've got it.

Octavia Butler's Kindred - absolutely essential - uses time travel to explore issues of identity, race and power.

Backward, Turn Backward (1988, in Crown of Stars) by James Tiptree/Alice Sheldon which involves a girl who travels back and forward in time while she insists on her own destruction - extremely powerful.

Lots of Steve Baxter's books involve manipulating wormholes to travel in time, starting with the Xeelee, including the Baxter/Clarke collaboration Light of Other Days, and carrying on in his more recent Manifold trilogy.

Very difficult these days to separate time travel from alternate worlds, of course.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Thanks for these! I'd not thought of the Tiptree; now for the fun of trying to track down a copy.

[coppervale.livejournal.com]

If we weren't already chums I wouldn't suggest this, but THE INDIGO KING is pretty much all time travel, using an antique Laterna Magica (devised by Jules Verne) that utilizes fives slides, each of which can be used once to go back to the time and place depicted in the slide for 24 hours. The fun aspect is that I really HAVE an infernal device, and will incorporate it into presentations I'm doing next year.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Shameless Pluggery, eh, James? I'll put it on the list.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

I'll presume that you're going to include L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall which is a (or perhaps, the) classic timeslip/alternative history story of a twentieth century professor ending up in fifth century Rome.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I read this many years ago and didn't much like it. Still, one of my little online purchases yesterday (book costs $0.01, shipping costs $3.99) was a copy of this.

[(Anonymous)]

The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman - jain

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. I don't think Joe would ever forgive me if I didn't include it . . .

[davidjwilliams.livejournal.com]

Heinlein's All You Zombies. de-fucking-MENTED

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Well, yes.

From Weirdmage

[(Anonymous)]

Harry Turtledove -"Guns of the South".
Combines Time Travel with Alternative History.

Re: From Weirdmage

[realthog.livejournal.com]

To what extent is it actually a time-travel story? I'd appreciate your guidance. By agreement with my editor, I'm leaving alternate worlds/histories to others.

[imzadidragonfly.livejournal.com]

Margaret J. Anderson wrote a nice selection of time travel books. The Mists of Time, In the Circle of Time and In the Keep of Time all connect. To Nowhere and Back is another one.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this info. I don't know Anderson's work at all, so will have to check it out.

time travel novel

[(Anonymous)]

The Tomorrow Code by Brian Falkner

Re: time travel novel

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Interesting -- I'll go have a look. Thanks!

Time Travel

[(Anonymous)]

Prince of Time by Glenna McReynolds
My Own True Love by Susan Sizemore
Wings of the Storm by Susan Sizemore
After the Storm by Susan Sizemore
When Lighting Strikes by Kristin Hannah

Re: Time Travel

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Why would you say that these books are especially worthy of attention? I don't know them, and seek guidance.

[stevesaus.livejournal.com]

The anthology Timeshares just came out this month. I'd recommend a few stories in it, because they don't just do the same old things.

Also I'd recommend "Babel Probe" by David D. Levine. I'm not sure where else it appeared, but it was in the Drabblecast episode #109: http://gardenstreet.org/drabblecastarchive/archive/101150_files/7e4ae3f38d2655962fafc2a6b9108572-77.php

[stevesaus.livejournal.com]

Oh, it should be noted that I do have a story in Timeshares - but I'd actually look at Allister Timm's "No Man's Land", Michael Stackpole's "By Our Actions", and Linda Baker's "Spoilers".

[thalinoviel.livejournal.com]

You've probably thought of everything I would reccommend but you might have missed "John Titor - A Time Traveler's Tale" which was originally published online in installments and purporting to be a true account. bytepilot is a big fan.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

you might have missed "John Titor - A Time Traveler's Tale" which was originally published online in installments and purporting to be a true account

I've never heard of this. I'll go look and see if I can find it.