Long Chronologies in Novels

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Joshua Jones

When all is said and done, all's quiet and boring.
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Many books have short chronologies; the events often happen over the course of days or weeks. I'm looking for the opposite; books whose storylines span very long time periods. As in, significantly longer than the lifespan of a single person. As in, centuries or millennia. And not so much the sort of books which have an ancient prophesy and then fast forward to the present; I'm looking for things happening in the interim.

The longest one I know of is Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers about 100 years, and The Forever War, which is over 1000. What else is out there?

Thanks in advance!
 
Does it have to be a long time as experienced by the characters, or just as reckoned by the narrator? If the latter, first thing that pops to mind for me is House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds (or quite a number of his other books, too). Galactic scale, but slower-than-light travel.
 
Ori Vandewalle said:
Does it have to be a long time as experienced by the characters, or just as reckoned by the narrator? If the latter, first thing that pops to mind for me is House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds (or quite a number of his other books, too). Galactic scale, but slower-than-light travel.
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Ooohhh interesting! I'm open to either, btw. One of my WiPs has a chronology of 1000 years, with two characters who are alive and active throughout, but others who are subject to the flow of time. I'm shopping for ideas on how to execute this.
 
Ok, the Children of Series is officially on my short to-buy list.

What else do we have?
 
I remember a book where the main characters find ways to slow down their life speed. They need more and more tending by normal speed humans. Until at least one of them is able to live until the galaxy dies. But title and author escape me. Maybe someone will recognize the story.
 
City by Clifford Simak

Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov

Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon

The Instrumentality stories by Cordwainer Smith
 
Lensman series (E. E. Doc Smith)

Dumerest series (E C Tubb) -

Both classic SF.

Dumerest is not so much many lifetimes, but because of the method of travel lives are extended by drugs. The MC visits a different world in each book of which there are over 30.
 
I think the longest timespan I’ve read is in the Thomas Covenant series. The protagonist’s existence in this world during the period of the story covers only a few years but in the land that he visits periodically over the ten books, the timespan runs into thousands of years.
 
Foxbat said:
I think the longest timespan I’ve read is in the Thomas Covenant series. The protagonist’s existence in this world during the period of the story covers only a few years but in the land that he visits periodically over the ten books, the timespan runs into thousands of years.
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Narnia, too :)
 
Vinge's Marooned in Realtime takes place over millions of years of Earth's future due to a technology which allows the small number of human survivors to freeze themselves in time.
 
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