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

[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 . . .

[txtriffidranch.livejournal.com]

You don't have a copy of the Dangerous Visions collections? If that's the case, I might be able to snag them for you. Just let me know: Science Fiction Book Club copies are very usable, and they're cheap.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I'll probably go for exactly that. I've just been buying a string of SFBC editions of books. General cost breakdown: book, $0.01; shipping, $3.99.