[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
Popping back in to really recommend A Shortcut in Time by Charles Dickinson.
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It’s in my to-be-read pile. I think someone here (you?) recommended a different book of his, but I picked up Shortcut instead because the premise sounded more interesting.
These are all great suggestions, which means I should bring up a book I found on an airplane once and skimmed through. It wasn’t particularly well-written (to these eyes), but involved a Time Travel Guide who, IIRC, was in the employ of an agency who sold time travel trips to wealthy clients. I remember in particular some sort of Greek orgy (there was liberal and rather graphic sex throughout the book). Eventually, the Guide falls in love with–and boinks–a girl in the past who, through some circutous path, turns out to be a great great, etal grandmother of himself. Problems then ensue or something like that.
Any idea what book this might’ve been?
[QUOTE=Sparrow]
Also the British SF humour writer Jasper Fforde’s literary detective Tuesday Next does a lot of time travelling with her dad. Quote: “My father had a face that could stop a clock …” (literally!)
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I loved those books. Hilarious, with lots of literary references to tickle the booklover. Just one quibble: Her name is Thursday Next.
I really enjoyed The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers. Not much hard science or philosophy, but it was well-written - the characters were interesting and the plot was clever. Funny, too!
How about Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five? I’m one of those who spleen Vonnegut tremendously, but I realize he isn’t for everyone.
It is also not about time travel per se, just that the main character moves freely between his past and present mostly not at will.
[QUOTE=Dung Beetle]
It’s in my to-be-read pile. I think someone here (you?) recommended a different book of his, but I picked up Shortcut instead because the premise sounded more interesting.
[/QUOTE]
Maybe. I recently read The Widows’ Adventures based on a recommendation from lissener, in the thread about books with older characters, and loved it. Crows by the same author is also good, but not as compelling as these other two. I have two more Dickinsons in the TBR. He’s my new favorite writer, I think.
When you’re finished with Shortcut in Time, I’ll have a question for you. Asking now would spoil the book.
How about H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine?
My recommendations have already been mentioned, but I’ll add my votes.
For me, the runner up is The Door Into Summer.
But the absolute apotheosis, without parallel in anything else I’ve read that covers the subject, is The Time Traveller’s Wife. Unremittingly clever, dense with head-fucking ideas, exremely moving, and beautifully written.
The End of Eternity is really Asimov’s main time-travel book, but his very first published novel, Pebble in the Sky, is a time-travel book. It doesn’t have the complexity of plot most look for, since there’s only one time jump and it’s forward into the distant future.
He wrote a great novella called The Dead Past, which was about time viewing, rather than travel. I also love a short story of his called “A Statue for Daddy” (or maybe “A Statue for Father”? I googled for it, since I don’t directly remember the title) with a humourous way of getting rich with a time machine.
The Dechronization of Sam Magruder is a pleasant little book by George Gaylord Simpson, a well-known paleontologist. It was discovered in his papers after his death. It tells how someone who really knows dinosaurs might survive if stranded in their time. If you know your dinos, you’ll need to read it through a filter of the theories of some decades past (not all up-to-date like Jurassic Park).
I came in to mention Flight of the Horse. Niven also has an enjoyable short story about why time travel is impossible (which I can’t recall the title to, tonight.) where some aliens in the middle of a “war-to-the-death” with another polity try to use that technique against their opponents. I’d also suggest his short story, “The Return of Robert Proxmire,” available in a number of collections.
I’ll second the recommendations for The Anubis Gates, Time and Again (How could there be a sequel, BTW?), and Connie Willis’ time travel books.
I have to make a warning about The Time Traveller’s Wife - I found it a great character book, and absolutely lousy SF. I object to handwavium, and that’s all the author’s explaination to the questions of “How?” is. I feel it would have been a much stronger book without the attempt to put in the scientific explaination for what what happening to the title character. When one starts breaking the first law of thermodynamics, one has a choice: either explain how it’s happening, or simply ignore the mechanics. The attempt to provide a scientific explaination left more holes in the story, and interfered with my enjoyment of the story, far more than leaving it unanswered would have.
[QUOTE=OtakuLoki]
I I have to make a warning about The Time Traveller’s Wife - I found it a great character book, and absolutely lousy SF.
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I think that’s totally the author’s intention.
Sorry – premature submititis.
To clarify: I don’t think it was her intention to write sci-fi at all, so I don’t think she can be faulted for writing “bad” sci-fi – it was totally her intention to explore the relationship of these two people in the context of, um, well, the fact that one was a time-traveler. You may recall I was the first to mention the book in this thread – and I qualified that it was a literary work, not a sci-fi work.
[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
Maybe. I recently read The Widows’ Adventures based on a recommendation from lissener, in the thread about books with older characters, and loved it. Crows by the same author is also good, but not as compelling as these other two. I have two more Dickinsons in the TBR. He’s my new favorite writer, I think.
When you’re finished with Shortcut in Time, I’ll have a question for you. Asking now would spoil the book.
[/QUOTE]
Okay, but it’s going to take me a couple of weeks to get around to reading Shortcut. My reading time is sadly limited and my book piles are deep. Sucks, but it’s better than having plenty of time and no reading material!
I see that I did pick up Widow’s Adventures as well. 
[QUOTE=twickster]
Sorry – premature submititis.
To clarify: I don’t think it was her intention to write sci-fi at all, so I don’t think she can be faulted for writing “bad” sci-fi – it was totally her intention to explore the relationship of these two people in the context of, um, well, the fact that one was a time-traveler. You may recall I was the first to mention the book in this thread – and I qualified that it was a literary work, not a sci-fi work.
[/QUOTE]
Well, if that’s the case, things would have gone down easier without her double-speak about what was happening to Henry.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to claim that to be good fiction a book should conform to any kind of genre standards. But if one is going to go partway into a genre, and I do contend that TTW is at least partially an SF work - if for no other reason than the author’s attempt to provide ‘scientific’ explainations for the more outre parts of the story - one’s work can be judged by those standards. And, more than anything else, it was the explainations that bothered me most, and were the cause of more than one incidence of being kicked out of the story, because my BS meter pegged high.
[spoiler]For an example of what I mean - do you remember the incident when Henry leaves his fillings, as well as his clothes behind? And Claire explains that he can’t take any non-living matter with him? At that point I was wondering why Henry isn’t bald - since hair is non-living, at least at the point where it exits the skin. Other concerns would include finger and toenails, skin, and possibly teeth.
Similarly, the whole ‘genetic clock’ explaination later on in the book bothered me - it got me thinking about what Henry was actually doing enough to consider little things like how, in order for Henry to pass through time so much, he also had to have some kind of absolute locator for the Earth - otherwise he’d end up in outer space, and die in quick order.
I maintain that it would have been a much stronger book had the author decided to simply treat Henry’s condition as something ‘magical’ and inexplicable, rather than to try to make up a scientific explaination that raised more questions than it answered. Until she began her explainations, I was completely in the book - it was after that that things bothered me. [/spoiler]
Now, you can see my gripe as being a long-time SF reader’s reaction to the attitude that a lot of literary types take towards SF, in general: It’s not real literature, so it’s not as prestigious as more acceptable fictions. (Certainly it burned me to have read a few reviews of the book on Amazon that assured others that the book wasn’t really SF, so it could be read without giving up one’s subscription to the New York Review of Books.) If someone’s going to play in somebody else’s sandbox (And whatever you or I may think about the overall quality of the book, the premise of time travel, no matter how it is carried through, is an SF premise.) one has an obligation to take the time to see what the general rules are.
There’s no obligation to follow the rules, I’ll admit. But if one fails to follow the rules, it should be done in such a way as to make the story stronger. Not weaker. And not kick out long-time sandbox players out of the story. 
OtakuLoki – you have a point. Although I do read in the genre, it’s occasional and incidental – I have a few authors I like, and I keep up with them.
[QUOTE=twickster]
Sorry – premature submititis.
To clarify: I don’t think it was her intention to write sci-fi at all, so I don’t think she can be faulted for writing “bad” sci-fi – it was totally her intention to explore the relationship of these two people in the context of, um, well, the fact that one was a time-traveler. You may recall I was the first to mention the book in this thread – and I qualified that it was a literary work, not a sci-fi work.
[/QUOTE]
So a science fiction work can’t be literary? Why not?
That’s not what I said.
You specifically said 'I qualified that it was a literary work, not a sci-fi work." That seems to clearly indicate it’s one or the other, but not both.
shrug
Okay, literary was a poor choice of words, then. My point was that she wasn’t writing from within the genre.
I really don’t have a dog in this fight, so I’m gonna let it drop here, if that’s okay with you.