I recently finished “The Anubis Gates” by Tim Powers, which I found fascinating and “impossible to put down,” as the blurbers say. Can anybody recommend other entertaining time travel fiction?
Thanks in advance,
Michael
(Literature goes here, right? If it’s a better fit for MPSIMS, please move it. Thanks!)
One time travel book that’s recommended by just about everyone is Replay by Ken Grimwood. I’ve never encountered anyone who didn’t love it.
I just finished Elleander Morning by Jerry Yulsman. It’s OOP but there are copies at Amazon. WWII never happened because Hitler was assassinated in 1924. It’s fascinating, if a bit romancey.
Time and Again by Jack Finney. In it, a government project is trying to see if someone can be sent to the past by making them believe he is there.¹ A set is constructed of a particular apartment in the Dakota² known to be empty on the target date in 1882 and for days, he sees and hears, and eats nothing that would tell the traveler, an artist, that is is not in 1882. Naturally, it works and he spends time in 1882 New York sketching things; the book is illustrated with period illustrations of what he saw. There’s more, of course, but it was interesting how historical events of 1882 NYC were woven into the story.
¹Yes, the same trope used in Somewhere in Time. The novel was out ten years before.
²When John Lennon was shot, I knew exactly where that was.
The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove. Actually it straddles the line between time travel and alternative history, but it’s an excellent read in any case.
While Ken Grimwood’s Replay is not your typical science fiction time-travel romp, it is still a fantastic novel, exploring the idea of being able to relive your life from an earlier point in time.
Century Rain by Alistair Huxley. It’s got a very film noir feel to it and an interesting concept which will be totally ruined by my explaining it to you.
Picture the movie The Final Countdown as a novel only it is a future fleet of the year 2020 Vs the Imperial Japanese Navy. Great fun.
(Featuring the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Hillary Clinton)
The last part of Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love. No question of causal paradoxes, which the physics of the universe of discourse rules out; just a man’s visit to his childhood, and a glimpse of a long-lost America Heinlein himself dimly remembered from his own.
Since Guns of the South was mentioned already, there’s another good Heinlein time travel book The Door Into Summer. Light on the science, but interesting.
If you want romance, try the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. Feisty heroine, red-headed Scot who’s an outlaw, Jacobites, witches, forced marriages, the King of France…what’s not to love?
Gabaldon writes with a sense of humor that despite having read the series about half a dozen times (I’m in the middle of Book 3 again) I still cry and laugh at parts I’ve lovingly wallowed in.