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

[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.

[thisplacehere.livejournal.com]

I've never actually read Timescape, but I've meant to for a while. And I ought to re-read Behold the Man, because I wasn't an experienced enough reader to appreciate it the first time. I don't know if the novella is available, I'm afraid; I've only ever seen the novel version.

Now I've mentioned Johnny and the Bomb, I remembered that you asked for YA books to be significant in terms of what they do with time-travel, and I can't honestly remember whether that book is! Still, if nothing else, it's a reason to read Pratchett...

I've thought of something else, which might be hard to get hold of if you don't already have a copy, but I'll mention it anyway -- Dear Abbey, a PS novella by Terry Bisson, which involves time-travel into the future.

[thisplacehere.livejournal.com]

Have thought of another -- Daphne du Maurier's The House on the Strand.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Definitely!