Came here to say this.
I loved this story. I read it initially without having any idea of the plot so after I’d finished it made for some really good and deep thinking.
Because lots of interesting stuff happened in those centuries? And it was all well enough documented that you can include characters and context that the reader may actually have heard of?
Understood, but the last thing I want in time travel science fiction is a tapestry of historical content overlaying the plot; I don’t want to read the battle of Waterloo with a twist, or a story about the future ramifications of a time traveler’s interception of Booth’s bullet. I like my science fiction more sciencey and more fictiony, yet within a plausible (as plausible as time travel can be) framework. So no Douglas Adamsy stuff.
Take me to the end of time, or to the death throes of human sentience, or its birth. Let me escape to a world just like ours, where time travel not only exists, but is the point of the story.
You definitely want to read All of an Instant, then.
One of my favorites–The Third Level by Jack Finney–is in this collection of short stories.
Just thinking about the romantic subplot(s) of that book make me queasy. It really becomes the central point of the book after a while. If the OP doesn’t want romance, he probably ought to avoid TMWFH.
Maybe Robert Silverberg - Hawksbill Station. The novel was from 1968 although there is an earlier novella of the same name. It’s set in a penal colony established in the very ancient past. Trilobites swim in the ocean…
More recently there was Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick. The link is to the opening scenes of the novel.
To be honest, they’re not well-written enough to be romantic…
Come to think of it, though I enjoyed Timeline once I turned off half my cerebrum, it’s not well-written enough to have actual sub-plots.
Or to be a…
[wait…checking my copy…let’s see, pieces of paper…one edge glued…ink on them…numbered consecutively…]
ok, it is a book.
Everyone who’s even looked at this thread should read this story.
:::hyperventilating:::
The Third Level was the first short story I really loved, and it started me reading non-stop back in 6th grade. But when I tried to find it years later (pre-internet), I realized that since I’d read nothing but hundreds of Science Fiction short stories in middle school (and wasn’t sure of the title or author), I could never find the specific collection I’d read this in.
And now I know where to find it-- and you even gave an Amazon link. Thank you.
Uh, oh. What if it doesn’t hold up? What if that last page doesn’t send shivers up my spine, and the last line dispel them in a chuckle? Oh, well. one way to find out…
Hmmm, so maybe next I should try to find Light of Other Days by Bob Shaw (second short story I discovered). It’s got a teeny bit of time travel, in a sense…
The Ugly Little Boy by Asimov.
You’re welcome. In my case, I originally found it toward the back of my 8th grade-or-so English textbook. I read it whenever I got bored in class.
It’s also right here:
I love the Company series, but I don’t think it qualifies for this thread due to requirement 4. Most of the Botanist Mendoza’s plots are at least partly love/romance storylines.