I’m sick in bed with a nasty cold and could use a new book to read. I’d love to hear your time travel book recommendations. I’ll start with a few of mine: the Accidental Time Machine, Timeline, 11/22/63 are my favorites. Whatchu got?
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Not a time traveling series — more like world traveling — the Shades of Magic series by VE Schwab. Incredible storytelling & world building. The perfect escape from our current reality!
If you have time to read. This has time travel. Just a large book. The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. A quick read by him is Mystborn. And it’s pretty cool and has time elements in it too. 300+ pages vs 1100+
You can have mine and finish writing it. I'm so pissed it isn't coming together. First four novels fly out. I decide to do this big ambitious thing and it's crap.
Given the current era I think Handmaids Tale is one to read. For something different Strange Flowers by Donal Ryan is a beauty. Or James - Percival Everett.
Gotta second The Gone World (Sweterlitsch), although it's an absolutely brutal story but it pushes forward the regular time travel tropes, it's fantastic work.
Smaller scale, Permafrost (Alistair Reynolds) is also great, and The Psychology of Time Travel (Mascarenhas) is a very different take
They’re not time travel books, but “The Overstory” and “Playground” by Richard Powers will make you a better person for having read them. (Not just you, anyone who reads them) 👍🏻
The Man Who Folded Himself, really wrings out the possibilities of time travel from someone who’s obviously a fan of the genre. It’s a hoot! In this version of time travel there’s no problem with going back and talking to yourself, or sitting at a table of you’s to play poker!
The best book I've read recently is *Shogun*. Although it's an older book and not about time travel, it is rooted in history. I really enjoyed it. I chose to read it because I didn't want to wait to find out what happens next on TV. It's available at most libraries through the Libby app.
Sarah Woodbury writes a nice series of books about time travel that I enjoy. I was directed to check out her books after liking the Outlander show on TV. (The Outlander book series is also excellent!) Sarah's character David ends up becoming a king deep in the past after dropping out of school in PA
Have you read “The Time Traveller’s Wife?”
I remember it being pretty good.
Hope you get better soon-
I had a nasty respiratory infection for the last couple of weeks.
I don’t enjoy the Tom Sawyer books, but I love Mark Twain‘s other books like the one you suggest, and his other travel looks like “Innocents Abroad” or (my favorite) “Following the Equator”.
H.G Wells The Time Machine and Paul Davies How To Build A Time Machine are good. Robert Heinline's All You Zombies is a marvelous short story. Get better soon.
Timeline was a great read. If you got a lot of time to relax, I suggest The H.G. Wells book that started it all. And staying with the classics, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mr Twain.
This was going to be my recommendation. Not exactly stereotypical time travel schtick, but it's well worth the read. Think if Harry Potter met Ready Player One with a dash of Back to the Future.
Gregory Benford's Timescape, and if you start noticing parallels between it and Steins:Gate understand the novel's translation was very popular in Japan
Loved The Accidental Time Machine. Got nada on time travel off the top of my head. Will keep watch here. Really liked Seven Eves-Stephenson. Story takes place over 5,000 years. A long TIME and space TRAVEL after Earth dies.
The peak time travel novel is Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Another favorite of mine is Time and Again by Jack Finney; along with Bid Time Return (aka Somewhere in Time) by Richard Matheson, it has the unique mechanic of time travel by self-hypnosis. Replay by Ken Grimwood is also memorable.
We used to keep extra copies around just to give to friends when they visited. I love all of Connie's time travel stories, but that one in particular still hits hard.
Awesome! I've been looking for some more good time travel-related books. I found Somewhere in Time and The Time Travelers Wife that way. About Time and Edge of Tomorrow are also great but no books that I know of.
Oh yeah. The Time Traveler's Wife is another of my favorites. I believe Edge of Tomorrow was based on a manga called All You Need Is Kill (a far superior title).
It makes so much sense now! A manga wow. And you're right that is a badass title. I need to build a list of time travel manga now. Ooh The girl Who Leapt Through Time... but that's anime 😅
There is a Girl Who Leapt Through Time novel (and live action film); the anime is a sort of sequel to it. I haven't read it but I think it's about her aunt.
The Light of Other Days by Arthur C Clark and Stephen Baxter is sort of time travel adjacent - it's about a device that lets people see back through time from the present moment, so privacy effectively disappears.
In the same vane, but looking into the future:
Machine of death - collection of short stories of a machine that will tell the user how they will eventually die. Gets pretty wild
A medieval tale by Lina J Potter. It’s a series with a female lead who time travels and teaches people about the wonders of soap and exercise. There’s more to her story but definitely look it up.
Being sick is basically time travel—one moment it’s Monday, next thing you know it’s Thursday and you’ve only moved to get tea. For the ride: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (mind-bendy), Kindred (powerful), and To Say Nothing of the Dog (chaotic & delightful). Get well soon!
A lot of people don’t know this, but War and Peace is a time travel story. It tells a story of how these Russian families travel forward in time at normal speed during a French invasion.
Island in the Sea of Time by SM Stirling, more of a stranded in time story but quite good has several sequels and a whole huge fantasy/apocolypse offshoot in the modern timeline. Might not be quite what you are looking for but quite good.
I tried to like it. But it started as an interesting concept, only to devolve into a smarmy love story and then a twist ending that seemed glued together with a glue stick and some rubber bands. A bit meh in my humble opinion.
Another suggestion I can recommend, although not quite fully time travel per se, is the Magic 2.0 series. What if time travel was accessed through a central kernel and many of the same people discovered it came to a similar conclusion… Be a WIZARD! Rife with pop cultural references and anachronisms!
The Guns of the South. Apartheid South Africans time travel to give the Confederacy AK-47s in an attempt to change history. Written by Harry Turtledove, a civil war historian, with a focus on realism and the actual personalities and though patterns of historic people. Great stuff.
Last Year by Robert Charles Wilson- I read sci fi exclusively, and this is a very unique idea, really different from the many other time travel books I’ve read.
Ministry of Time is about a woman who works with a government agency on plucking people out of timelines for a mysterious purpose. All Systems Red is a short but fun read about a "murderbot" on an interplanetary mission. Song of Achilles is a retelling of the Trojan War from Patrocles perspective.
@conniewillisdotnet.bsky.social wrote Blackout and All Clear about historians who travel back in time to study history in this case, the London Blitz. Fantastic reads #blackout #allclear #conniewillis #books #timetravel #WWII 💙📚
I almost forgot, another one people forget "Harry Harrison The Technicolor Time machine! A nearly bankrupt studio, need a movie within the week and have nothing. They end up backing a discredited scientist with a time machine, and Film a viking epic in 1050 Pretty much on location.
Also because it does not get the credit it deserves Somewhere in Time by Richard Matheson. Its a LOT better than the dippy movie Christopher Reed was in.
And its not really Time Travel as such but the Man who awoke. By Laurence Mannning. About a man in the early thirties who finds a way to take massive hibernation for many thousands of years so its time travel but in big jumps forward.
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The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter (authorized sequel to H G Wells The Time Machine
The Gone World (Sweterlitsch) - tone is True Detective + Twin Peaks + Annihilation + time travel
The Light Brigade (Hurley) - military sci-fi
Sea of Tranquility (Mandel) - slow burn but good payoff, same tone as Station 11 (same author)
You're Welcome.
Brendan Wilson 👍
Smaller scale, Permafrost (Alistair Reynolds) is also great, and The Psychology of Time Travel (Mascarenhas) is a very different take
I think Recursion was a great one - I couldn't put it down
I would also check out 20 billion days, 100 billion nights. (Also an approximate title)
TIME AFTER TIME by Allen Appel (no relation to the film)
TIMESCAPE by Gregory Benford
I remember it being pretty good.
Hope you get better soon-
I had a nasty respiratory infection for the last couple of weeks.
This is How You Lose the Time War
And arguably Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Hope you feel better soon!
Machine of death - collection of short stories of a machine that will tell the user how they will eventually die. Gets pretty wild
By: Matt Haig
And just for kicks, The Time Traveler’s Wife is also great, and completely different
by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland
Time loop, not time travel: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Fun read, you will not regret a minute you read it.
But it’s not a time travel book, it’s a causality violation book.
Visitors to Earth come back through time.
And its not really Time Travel as such but the Man who awoke. By Laurence Mannning. About a man in the early thirties who finds a way to take massive hibernation for many thousands of years so its time travel but in big jumps forward.
Cirque du freak by Darren Shan
Anything by HP Lovecraft
The Demonata by Darren Shan
Harry Potter by JK Rowling if you haven’t already
Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan