Which time travel book should I read next?

Recently, I have read several time travel novels and I love the genre. But, now I’m at a loss. I’m not sure what to read next. So, check out a list of what I’ve read so far and tell me what else is good. Feel free to opine about time travel books in general, too. What’s the best one ever.

I’ve read:
The Time Machine - H G Wells
Time & Again - Jack Finney
Timeline - Michael Crichton
1632 - Eric Flint
Replay - Ken Grimwood
Crucifixion Conspiracy - Jeffrey Jacobs

Oh, I’ve also read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain.

I was going to suggest Time and Again.
He has a short story about a train station (The Third Level?) and The Woodrow Wilson Dime.

Here’s a list you might find helpful. It’s juvenile fiction, but you might still enjoy some of these.

And here’s another list.

Well, this is a coincidence. As I sit here at the computer the sequel to 1632 , titled not surprisingly 1633, is on the desk with me. It’s pretty good too, and there is supposed to be another out sometime. Of course it’s more alternative history, but it’s still fun.

Have you read Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague DeCamp?

How about Connie Willis? I’ve read two of hers and they were pretty good. Doomsday Book is medieval (and strangely relevant given SARS) and To Say Nothing of the Dog is Victorian.

How about Doomsday Book by Connie Willis?

Thanks for the suggestions.

Baker, I started to read 1633. I just haven’t finished it yet. I guess it’s time travel since the town went back in time. Of course I love alternative history too.

Looks like two votes for Doomsday Book.

I’ll probably print this thread later and read them all eventually.

This time travel page has an amazing number of links on the subject, along with a listing of dozens of time travel novels.

A few that I like:

The Lincoln Hunter (1958) - Wilson Tucker
Up The Line (1969) Robert Silverberg
The Man Who Folded Himself (1980) - David Gerrold
Kindred (1988) - Octavia Butler
Corrupting Dr. Nice (1997) - Kessel, John

He doesn’t mention Kurt Vonnegut’s Salughterhouse 5, but I consider it to be a time travel novel. And a classic, of course.

I recommend the Nantucket series by S.M. Stirling: “Islands in the Sea of Time,” “Against the Tide of Years,” and “On the Oceans of Eternity.” It’s essentially a “Connecticut Yankee” kind of story: By means never disclosed, the entire island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, is suddenly transported in time back to the Bronze Age – 1250 B.C. The Nantucketers have to make the best of this in dealing with the Babylonians, Egyptians, etc. It’s more plausible than “Connecticut Yankee,” because Hank Morgan would have to be some kind of technological superman to industrialize Sixth-Century Britain singlehanded, but a whole town of modern Americans probably would have the collective knowledge necessary to replicate the industrial era in the Bronze Age.

Depends on what you’re looking for. Do you want to read about our modern-day heroes having adventures in colorful historic periods, or in an imaginary future; or do you want time-travel fiction that is mainly about time travel as a concept? The latter kind mainly revolves around causal paradoxes. (You really can’t make the story about the technology of time travel, since nobody really knows how time travel would be possible, even in theory, so it’s always used as an unexplained “black box” technology, like Star Trek’s warp drive, antigravity, and force fields.) Since there’s only so much you can say about causal paradoxes, this theme works best in a short story. Check out the classic Heinlein tales, “By His Bootstraps” and “All You Zombies”; Ray Bradbury’s “Sound of Thunder”; Spider Robinson’s “Chronic Offender” and “Half an Oaf”; and L. Sprague de Camp’s “A Gun for Dinosaur.”

Another excellent “Connecticut Yankee” series is the Conrad Stargard novels by Leo Frankowski. A 20th-century Polish engineer stumbles onto a time machine and accidently gets stuck in medieval Poland. Knowing his history, he calculates he has seven years to organize and indusrialize the country before the Mongols invade. There are seven novels so far – the first is called “The Cross-Time Engineer.”

You’ll never go wrong with Robert A. Heinlein.
The door into summer.
And two excellent shorts: “All you zombies” and “By your bootstraps”, which basically set the standard for time travel paradoxes.

Try “The Time Ships” by Stephen Baxter, I finished it a couple of weeks ago. He’s picks up the Time Machine, fron the morning after HG Wells left off, but with more hard science.

Guns of the South, by Harry Turtledove is pretty good, though it lies between alternate history/time traveling…

If I Never Get Back by Darryl Brock

About a man who is transported from the 1990’s to 1869. He joins the Cincinnatti Red Stockings baseball team and has a number of adventures and even meets Samuel Clemens.

If Jack Finney’s Time and Again appealed to you, he wrote a sequel years later entitled From Time to Time, featuring the same characters. Many of his classic time travel short stories were also reprinted in a collection somewhat predictably entitled About Time. This book includes “The Woodrow Wilson Dime,” and “I Love Galesburg in the Springtime,” two of his most famous stories, and it’s worth keeping an eye out for.

this post has been Graped by the Grapist!

I suppose I like the interaction between the old and new more that anything. My interest isn’t so much in how time travel could actually work. I also don’t care too much about the concepts or paradoxes and such. To me it’s more about imagining what things would have been like in the past and how a modern person could handle it. Or, what would someone from the past think of today’s world? Would George Washington like the way the United States turned out?

Once again, thanks for the ideas. I’ll keep them all for future (ha) reference.

Mindkiller-Spider Robinson
Time Scout series-Robert Lynn Asprin & Linda Evans
The Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge (my personal favorite)-Harry Harrison
Number of the Beast-Robert A Heinlein.

Everyone, please tell me if you enjoyed that series. I’m not usually a reader of fiction, let alone time-travel fiction, but I was intrigued because of my love of history.