Good Time Travel Short Stories, Novellas, Novels

[Elentarri]

The Mammoth Book of Time Travel SF edited by Mike Ashley. It's an anthology, so you have a bunch of different authors and different ideas.

 

[Guttersnipe]

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold. I lost interest but it's a pretty original time travel novel. Also, the very short story "The Biography Project" by H.L. Gold.

 

[BAYLOR]

Morlock Night by K W Jeter Its a sequel to H g Wells novel . In it the Morlocks have gotten hold of the time matches and turned all history into their feeding ground .

Map of Time by Felix J. Palma Time travel and alt history all in one book and a glorious read . H G Wells is on the main characters .

 

[Rodders]

Has anyone mentioned Stephen Baxter's "Time Ships" yet? Another sequel to the Time Machine, i preferred this one to KW Jeter's sequel.



Neal Asher's Cowl was pretty good. I remember struggling at first, but ultimately i found it to be quite a worthwhile read.

 

[BAYLOR]

Has anyone mentioned Stephen Baxter's "Time Ships" yet? Another sequel to the Time Machine, i preferred this one to KW Jeter's sequel.

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Neal Asher's Cowl was pretty good. I remember struggling at first, but ultimately i found it to be quite a worthwhile read.

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There is also The Time Machine II by George Pal and Joe Morhaim is a sequel to the 1960 film .

 

[Randy M.]

There's The Time Traveler's Almanac (Contents: Publication: The Time Traveler's Almanac)

Not sure all the stories would be to your taste, but besides "The Sound of Thunder" it includes two of my favorite variations on the theme, "Vintage Season" and "Enoch Soames".

 

[Extollager]

I love “Vintage Season.”

 

[alexvss]

Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another by Robert Silverberg. A different take on time travel: they build AIs based on famous people, then give them sentience.

 

[BAYLOR]

Soldier by Harlan Ellison

 

[Vince W]

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.

 

[BAYLOR]

1632 by Eric Flint

 

[Extollager]

Thanks once more, everyone, for these suggestions for good time travel stories. Some of them I have read with enjoyment. : )

 

[J-Sun]

(Warning up front, that I may mix up an occasional alternate world story in with the time travel as they don't always stay distinct in the memory.)

I also like Bick's "Time Out." I haven't read the Haldeman (in the Pile) but I think his story "Anniversary Project" is really good. If we're including his Forever War, then I'd add Anderson's Tau Zero and Sheffield's Between the Strokes of Night as great dilation tales. Also like Victoria's Heinleins, Rodders' Cowl, Randy's "Vintage Season" and alexvss' Silverberg. There were several excellent Silverberg time travel stories but I can't fix which is which in my head. "Hawksbill Station" in its novella format is quite good, though I don't think I'd be interested in the novel expansion. For instance, Varley's "Air Raid" is good, but I hated its expansion (Millennium).

I've either missed a couple of famous examples or they haven't been mentioned: Fritz Leiber's Changewar stories and novel and de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall. On almost any topic, I'll mention Asimov, with his End of Eternity (not my favorite of his novels, but still pretty good), the early "Red Queen's Race," the spoof article "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline," and probably more I'm inexplicably forgetting. I think Bob Shaw's "Light of Other Days" also qualifies.

Perhaps not as well known, Kuttner's The Time Axis, The Mask of Circe, and "The Fairy Chessmen" all have time travel included or featured and are all excellent. I think Williamson's "The Legion of Time" was pretty good, if not as good as his much more famous and larger Legion of Space series. Mildred Clingerman's "Letters from Laura" is sneaky, clever, and good.

It might not be any good, but I remember really liking Hogan's The Proteus Operation (one of many WWII time travel/alternate history books) when I read it a zillion years ago.

The ones that first popped into my head, though, were Charles Harness' wonderful The Paradox Men (aka Flight into Yesterday) and Lester del Rey's "And It Comes Out Here." There have been a lot of time travel stories written when someone like me, who doesn't even like them as a rule, has so many that he likes but the del Rey is a great one for people who don't like time travel. Finally, one that didn't occur to me right away but should have is Ted Chiang's "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate."

 

[JunkMonkey]

I remember Harry Harrison's Technicolor Time Machine being a silly little fun read - a film production company uses a time machine to make period movies with a very short turnaround.

Philip Dick's - Minority Report and Paycheck play with the idea of being able to accurately see into the near future - and since we are all time travellers (at an average speed of one minute per minute) I guess they would fit the bill too.

 

[Swank]

I just read an interesting version of time travel in Alastair Reynolds' novela Permafrost. One of his better reads.

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

I've just started reading the anthology The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction 22nd Series
The first story is The Hertford Manuscript by Richard Cowper
Another relating to HG Wells' offering.

 

[cyprus7]

I'm a fan of Ken Grimwood's 1986 novel, "Replay".
From Wikipedia: "Replay is a fantasy novel by American writer Ken Grimwood, first published by Arbor House in 1986. It won the 1988 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel ."

 

[Elckerlyc]

The first time-travel story I read (a long time ago) was By His Bootstraps (1961) from Robert Heinlein. Made a lasting impression.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Axis of Time series by John Birmingham

 

[Bick]

'—All You Zombies—' by Heinlien - best short story to explore time travel paradoxes. The protagonist is his own mother and father, and the logical time loops are pretty clever.