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Time Travel

MrHill

New Member
I always get special enjoyment from time travel stories, especially if they involve paradoxes.
Has anyone a good story or novel on this subject to recommend?
Please only suggest books you've read yourself and enjoyed
 
I love time travel stories too. Here are some of my favorites:

Jack Finney: Time and Again. This is probably my absolute favorite. A modern man named Simon Morley travels to 1880s New York City.

Stephen Fry: Making History. Everybody always thinks if you can go back in time, you should get rid of Hitler, right? Stephen Fry shows that might not turn out quite as planned.

Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife. You probably know this one, since it made a big splash a few years ago.

Connie Willis: The Doomsday Book. Oxford University scientist accidentally winds up in a plague-ridden village in the 14th century. I have mixed feelings about this book. It was a good story in many ways, but Willis is practically obsessed with disease and has some very odd views about what technology will be like in the future in Oxford––as in, telephones will operate on about a 1950s level.

Stephen King: 11/22/63. A high school English teacher travels back to 1963, where he tries to prevent several tragedies, including the assassination of JFK.

Andrew Sean Greer: The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells. A depressed woman in 1985 New York decides to get electroshock therapy. After each treatment, she wakes up, as herself, in either the present, 1918 or 1941. Each visit shows her other, possible lives.

Ken Grimwood: Replay. Jeff Winston dies of a massive heart attack and wakes up at age 18. He tries to change his life, with unexpected results.

Peter Delacorte: Time on My Hands. An actor travels back to 1938 to try to prevent Ronald Reagan from every becoming president.

Kage Baker: In the Garden of Iden. First in a series about a 24th-century Company that trains orphans from the past and sends them on historical missions.
 
We need to add Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, in which Harry Morgan brings Yankee ingenuity and 19th-century technology to Camelot.

Also, a book unlike any other, W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn. In this book, the narrator goes on a walking trip not only through East Anglia, England, but through England's history. It's a lovely, dark, eccentric trip; there are photographs; and I highly recommend it.
 
While not strictly a time travel book, you might like The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K LeGuin. It's about a man whose dreams can change reality. It has many of the same elements as time travel stories - e.g. How changing one thing in the past can alter the future in unexpected, sometimes horrifying ways.
 
Not quite on the same level as Replay (my favorite) but I can recommend two by Charles Dickinson -- A Shortcut in Time and A Family in Time. In Shortcut, the main character encounters a young woman from the 1800's and manages to travel back to her time. In the sequel -- ya know what? I can't remember what happened in the sequel.

Dickinson is a favorite. His books have one thing in common -- flinty characters, not always likeable. I e-mailed him after reading Shortcut. I was curious about whether there'd be a sequel, and I also wanted to see if he was as prickly as his characters. He's not -- he's quite nice. My favorite book of his is The Widow's Adventures -- two old ladies take a road trip, and the driver is blind. He made it work.

A more recent time travel I kinda liked is The Here and Now by Ann Brashares. People from a future devastated by plague come back to 2010.

Does Kate Atkinson's new book count as time travel? Life After Life features a woman being reborn, over and over.

Oh! Another one (out of print) I liked is more of a romance but was still fun -- Eleander Morning by Jerry Yulsman.
 
Great to have more recommendations.

I loved Life After Life. I don't know if it counts as time travel, but I count it as a kind of alternative history, and that's another sub-genre I enjoy a lot.
 
i now have the followinf folks;
stephen king and fry [thanks to Rox]
connie willis
kage baker
ken grimwood
u leguin
keep the recommendations coming and thanks
 
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