# Time Travel Fiction
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [March 29, 2010, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228 "2010-03-29T17:01:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@well\_he\_s\_back](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/well_he_s_back)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/1 "2010-03-29T17:01:46Z")
The scifi and fantasy fields are fraught with land mines in birthing good literature, though many authors have succeeded. I think the toughest subject to deal with is time travel. The inherent conundrums of writing a good story concerning time travel are enormous. And they make most time travel stories unsatisfying, at least for me.
However I just finished a young-adult series of novels focusing on time travel and these books were very satisfying. The series is the Gideon trilogy by Linda Buckley-Archer. [http://www.amazon.com/Time-Travelers-Gideon-Trilogy/dp/1416915265/ref=pd\_sim\_b\_2](http://www.amazon.com/Time-Travelers-Gideon-Trilogy/dp/1416915265/ref=pd_sim_b_2)It is wonderful and highly recommended.
How do you all out there in doperland feel about time travel stories? Are the inevitable plot convolutions worth the trouble? Which ones have you enjoyed?
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### Author:  [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/2 "2010-03-29T17:04:57Z")
[Time After Time](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_After_Time_(1979_film)) is hands down the best film, based on the strangest premise, in this genre. I saw it several times in the theatre, but couldn’t get many other people to see it.
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### Author:  [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/3 "2010-03-29T17:07:06Z")
I love time travel tales, always have. The only problem I have with some is the way they ignore the implications of the technology. For instance, Mastodonia by Clifford Simak is a great yarn, but they never even try to go into historical times, or even ask if they can go into the future. I am not asking that Simak change the whole concept of the plot, but how about just a few throwaway lines saying why it’s incredibly dangerous or impossible?
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/4 "2010-03-29T17:10:50Z")
Robert Heinlein’s **By his Bootstraps** is the ultimate convoluted time-travel stoery, to me. Everyone seems to prefer **All You Zombies** 9which leaves me cold), but BHB has a complex but consistent series of repeating loops through time.
Robert L. Forward, who was a physicist and said he wouldn’t believe the Grandfather Paradox until someone could prove it to him, physically or mathematically, wrote **timeMaster** to show what a coherent and logical Timne-Travel story (with the protagonist encountering himself multiple times) would be like. Worth the read.
David Gerrold’s **The Man Who Folded Himself** is, apparently, an attempt to fit all the time travel tropes in one short story. A fun read.
James Hogan’s **The Proteus Operation** tells a looped time travel story that seems consistent. It’s fun because he actually got permission from the real-life characters to use them in his story.
Mark Twain’s **a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court** is the first and one of the best modern-man-goes-into-the-past-and-uses-superior-technology novels, and one of the best, in that he shows the character’s limitations. l. Sprague de Camp’s **lest Darkness Fall** is a worthy successor, and Harry Turtledove’s **Guns of the South** is a great recent example.
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### Author:  [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/5 "2010-03-29T17:16:26Z")
**Primer** is my favorite time travel movie, even if it does have the crappiest looking time machine since Calvin and Hobbes traveled through time in a cardboard box.
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/)
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### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/6 "2010-03-29T17:26:01Z")
I love time travel stories, and I just enjoy them – I don’t fret if the author doesn’t close all the holes or address all the paradoxes. I figure if I can accept time travel, I should be able to accept everything that goes with it.
I think one of the most intriguing time travel novels is _Replay_ by Ken Grimwood. Another good one is _A Shortcut in Time_ by Charles Dickinson.
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### Author:  [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/7 "2010-03-29T17:31:11Z")
Poul Anderson’s Time Patrol stories were a personal favorite of mine.
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### Author:  [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/8 "2010-03-29T17:33:09Z")
In terms of time travel novels, I won’t say it is the best, but it is the one I’ve read the most. The **Adventures of Conrad Stargard** by Leo A. Frankowski. It is up to seven books now.
It is about a modern Polish engineer who accidentally is transmitted back in time to 13th century Poland.
I enjoy reading about all the things he _invents_. Most of the times, they are real inventions, because he knows what is possible, but only a vague idea how to do it.
[http://www.amazon.com/Cross-Time-Engineer-Adventures-Conrad-Stargard/dp/0345327624](http://www.amazon.com/Cross-Time-Engineer-Adventures-Conrad-Stargard/dp/0345327624)
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/9 "2010-03-29T17:34:53Z")
Seconding the Frankowski, but only the first 4 books. After that they get repetitive and silly.
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### Author:  [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/10 "2010-03-29T17:45:40Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> Mark Twain’s **a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court** is the first and one of the best modern-man-goes-into-the-past-and-uses-superior-technology novels, and one of the best, in that he shows the character’s limitations. l. Sprague de Camp’s **lest Darkness Fall** is a worthy successor, and Harry Turtledove’s **Guns of the South** is a great recent example.
Harry Turtledove got Ph.D. in Byzantine history because he read **Lest Darkness Fall**.
Reading **Lest Darkness Fall** only caused me to find a copy of **The Secret History** by Procopius, so I could find out what the Empress Theodora used to complain about. 😉
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/11 "2010-03-29T17:52:10Z")
> [@](#):
>
> In terms of time travel novels, I won’t say it is the best, but it is the one I’ve read the most. The Adventures of Conrad Stargard by Leo A. Frankowski. It is up to seven books now.
Unless someone else writes them, there won’t be more. Frankowski died not that long ago.
I forgot Robert Silverberg’s **Up the Line**. If Harry Turtledove was going to get a Ph.D. for Byzantine history, _this_ is the one he should have read.
I also have a soft spot for “Time Travelers Hunting Dinosaurs”:
**A Sound of Thunder** by Ray Bradbury (the movie’s not altogether bad)
**A Gun for Dinosaur** by L. Sprague de Camp, and its expansion, **Rivers of Time**. De Camp didn’t like Sound of Thunder, and this is his response.
**Deathbeast** by David Gerrold is a gory example
Asimov wrote a sorta story like this, and Jim Danforth was trying to make a movie about it about 20 years ago (it never got made).
_Don’t_ see the TV movie **The Last Dinosaur** , though.
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/12 "2010-03-29T18:01:41Z")
I think we have to distinguish between “time _traveling_” and “one-way trip.” The former has all the conundrums. The latter is just straight-forward story-telling. That puts _All You Zombies_ and _The Cross-Time Engineer_ in different catagories completely.
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### Author:  [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/13 "2010-03-29T18:09:32Z")
Obligatory nod to Connie Willis, who has written several books based on on the idea that time travel technology exists, but is of insufficient economic value to be practiced by anyone other than a poorly-funded Oxford University project. I quite liked both _To say Nothing of the Dog_ and _The Doomsday Book_, despite being considerably different in tone from each other.
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### Author:  [@PlainJain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlainJain)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/14 "2010-03-29T18:11:47Z")
[Time Rider](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086443/) is a fun romp that doesn’t derail too badly due to the unavoidable conundrums.
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### Author:  [@Strassia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strassia)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/15 "2010-03-29T18:21:34Z")
For good time travel tales, I would recommend [The Virgin and the Dinosaur](http://www.amazon.com/Virgin-Dinosaur-R-Garcia-Robertson/dp/0380779781) by R. Garcia y Robertson. It logically covers most paradoxes such as where are all the time travelers an the Grandfather paradox in creative ways while telling a compelling and entertaining story.
For a bad example, read (or not) Michael Crichton’s [Timeline](http://www.amazon.com/Timeline-Michael-Crichton/dp/0345417623). It denies that time travel is possible by explicitly stating that they are moving into parallel universes that just happen to be offset in time by whatever amount (they end up in medieval France, so maybe 800 years), but then the plot turns on finding artifacts in a present day archeological dig from the “dimension travelers”. How can any author let that slid? Your entire story hinges on your central premise being wrong.
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### Author:  [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/16 "2010-03-29T18:28:36Z")
> [@Strassia](#):
>
> How can any author let that slid? Your entire story hinges on your central premise being wrong.
Despite his popularity and credentials, Crichton was not that good of a writer or fact-checker.
He wasn’t that bright either, IMHO.
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### Author:  [@Philliam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philliam)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/17 "2010-03-29T18:37:12Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#):
>
> Obligatory nod to Connie Willis, who has written several books based on on the idea that time travel technology exists, but is of insufficient economic value to be practiced by anyone other than a poorly-funded Oxford University project. I quite liked both _To say Nothing of the Dog_ and _The Doomsday Book_, despite being considerably different in tone from each other.
…to say nothing about how well-written they both were. Brilliant stuff.
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/18 "2010-03-29T18:41:16Z")
> [@Strassia](#):
>
> For a bad example, read (or not) Michael Crichton’s [Timeline](http://www.amazon.com/Timeline-Michael-Crichton/dp/0345417623).
I caught a few minutes of the film adaptation but wrote it off when one of the students asked, paraphrased, “why are we taking marines with us?”
Dummy. You’re being dropped into the middle of the Hundred Years War. The correct question isn’t “why do we need marines?”, it’s “why don’t we have _more_ marines?”
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### Author:  [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/19 "2010-03-29T18:42:53Z")
Tim Powers’ _The Anubis Gates_, despite having many fantasy elements, has a very neat, tightly-wound set of time-travel paradoxes at its core. And is great fun on top of that.
(“Ihay endanbray, ancay ouyay iggitday?”)
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### Author:  [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)
#### Post date: [March 29, 2010, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/time-travel-fiction/534228/20 "2010-03-29T18:50:50Z")
“Outlander” (and sequels “Drums of Autumn” and “Voyager”) is still one of my my favorite series.
There are a few weird timeline issues, but overall you just learn to accept them and move on with the story.
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