Looking for a clever time-travel novel

I liked Sea of Tranquility but couldn’t get into A Glass Hotel. Any suggestions for a good page-turner?

I was delighted to NOT see my favorite time travel novels in your library. They’re both by Blake Crouch.

Dark Matter and Recursion

In no particular order, and if you haven't yet read them, you might take a peek at...

• The Anubis Gates
  
• The Accidental Time Machine
  
• Millennium
  
• The Man Who Folded Himself
  
• Kindred
  

Also, not a full novel but, if you haven't read Heinlein's All You Zombies, treat yourself to both the short story and the film adaptation, Predestination.

You don't list The Time Machine, so that's a recommendation if you haven't read it.

(I don't typically like time travel stories, but I do like that one.)

I'm fond of Just one damned thing after another by Jodi Taylor. That whole series, The Chronicles of St. Mary's and the Time Police spin-off are clever, fast, and fun. Also frequently laugh-out-loud.

Some good ones from recent years:
This Is How You Lose The Time War
Alice Payne Arrives
The Light Brigade
The Psychology of Time Travel
The Future of Another Timeline

>3 ScoLgo: Good list, especially The Anubis Gates

I'll also add The Extracted Trilogy which I really enjoyed.

Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity. I think it may be his best novel.

I'll add Robert Charles Wilson's A Bridge of Years which I mentioned on the parallel thread to this one. Perhaps the threads could do with combining?

>9 spaceowl: I don't think that's possible. It's quite irritating when people start duplicate threads like this.

>9 spaceowl: >10 anglemark: - I do have two posts on sci-fi, bit one is on SF generally - I’ve been largely out of it for many years - and the other is this - on time travel, specifically. When I first posted it was on Club Read and aimed at a different audience than this, it’s not as if I have duplicated the same topic in one group. >10 anglemark: Unless you are referring to my introduction in the Welcome topic, but I don’t think that can be considered part of a duplicate.

>10 anglemark: It's not really that irritating. We all make mistakes. I just didn't want the OP to miss A Bridge of Years. It's a very good book in general, especially on time travel. I suppose you could add The Chronoliths by Wilson as well, it's very highly thought of but I didn't rate it that highly. YMMV, after all.

>4 AndreasJ: >2 Alexandro69: >3 ScoLgo: Thanks, these are all helpful suggestions.

>5 tardis: interesting. I was going through posts on another group last night and was interested in a list that Anne (AnnieMod) posted and found Jodi Taylor from it. I nearly bought One Damned Thing After another but it was 1 am so I thought I’d post on time travel as my initial query was yielding so many subjects-sub-genres, and wanted to narrow it down, now that I was getting into the swing of it. There’s so much more out there now since I last read SF.

>6 Aquila: >7 UncleMort: Thanks - all these look interesting.

>12 spaceowl: A Bridge of Years sounds good and it’s available in audio. AND it’s set in NYC at least in part, and that’s where I now live. Thanks!

>16 kjuliff: Greenwich Village in the early Sixties, in fact. Great time to be in Greenwich Village :) .

>11 kjuliff: This thread and https://www.librarything.com/topic/348424 are functionally duplicates.

>12 spaceowl: I get to think it's irritating if I want to! ;) I agree it's easy to make beginner's mistakes, though, and it's not the end of the world. I'm not exactly upset. Irritation is a mild feeling with me.

As for the topic at hand, I second This Is How You Lose The Time War and The Anubis Gates. I quite liked To say nothing of the dog as well.

>18 anglemark: >12 spaceowl: - oh I see now there was in fact a duplicate. It was in error. I had posted a topic late last night and didn’t like the title. I thought I had deleted the whole thing - as you can’t edit the title - and deleted the whole post - or so I thought - and reposted. So it was an error and I apologize.

What about The Big Time by Fritz Leiber? Short, classic, and takes the "time war" concept in a really sophisticated direction.

I'm a big fan of Tim Powers and John Crowley, so at some point I know I need to read The Anubis Gates and Great Work of Time, respectively.

And a few months ago I read Connie Willis's first time travel short story, Fire Watch, in preparation for reading Doomsday Book (but haven't gotten around to it yet).

>6 Aquila: Whoops! How did I forget The Light Brigade and This Is How You Lose the Time War?!? I thought both were excellent.

Thought of a few more...

• The Door Into Summer
  
• 11/22/63
  
• If you like romance, Bid Time Return is rather good, (not my usual genre choice but it's Matheson so... ;)
  
• An older title would be Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
  
• The Shining Girls, (this one's rather violent in places)
  
• Technically, Hyperion has time travel - and a whole lot more. If you decide to try it, I suggest also having The Fall of Hyperion handy.
  

Also recommend not highly enough Julian May's series beginning with The Many Colored Land.

I quite enjoyed the immersive nature of Jack Finney's Time and Again, and it certainly has a novel approach to the mechanics of time travel. (I suspect many find the mechanics not so much "novel" as hand-wavey.)

William Gibson's recent Jackpot novels utilize a cybernetic approach to time travel, also quite good.

>14 kjuliff: Buy it. Read it. Get the next. Rinse and repeat! :) The first can be a bit uneven (writing-wise) but she gets better as she goes and I really enjoy the series :) It is fun and it is jumping all over the past (so even if you do not care about a period, don't worry, you will be elsewhere for tea). One warning though - make sure you have tea handy - chances are you will really wish for a cuppa. ;)

I second the call-outs for Doomsday Book and its short prequel, Fire Watch. I'm afraid that there, Connie Willis, time travel and me part ways. To say nothing of the dog is full of inaccuracies (though the episode of the burning of Coventry Cathedral is an effective piece of writing); Blackout/All Clear even more so. The author's claims to have done research are laughable.

I have a couple of Jodi Taylor's on the TBR pile, though the first Time Police novel, Doing Time sits on my shelf and every time I look at it, the title turns into onomatopoeia - "Doing! Time".

>25 RobertDay: I recently read Blackout and, finding it a long-winded slog, am not very much inclined to finish the series by picking up All Clear. I rather enjoyed To Say Nothing of the Dog when I read it - but that was my first Willis. At this point, having read quite a few of her novels, I am just about full up with her obtusely block-headed side characters that never. ever. simply. listen to the protagonist, (Maurice Mandrake from Passage is a particularly egregious example). Doomsday Book, despite also featuring some of the same character flaws that she insist on using in seemingly every novel, was very good though.

>25 RobertDay: Blackout/All Clear seems to be one of those novels (I know, I know - 2 of them but they are a single novel essentially) that either click or you or they don't. I know she fibbed on the actual history but... it worked as a novel for me, with the understanding that I am not reading a history book and some of what was happening happened a tad different than it actually did.

If one is in the mood for the somewhat glacial speed of the narrative, it works. Or worked for me anyway. :)

One of my favorite time travel books doesn't really let on that it is a time travel book until fairly late in the story, so I feel odd about recommending it. Spoiler tagging gives me license:
Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey.

I will suggest these time travel books I have enjoyed:
Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card
Lest Darkness Falls by L. Sprague De Camp

Checking out your profile, I see that we have only 21 books in common. Yay, so many things I could rec. OTOH, it's hard to find audiobooks for graphic novels and some older books, so that helps narrow down the list.

-- Annalee Newitz wrote The future of another timeline, which I thought was great.
-- The seven deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton is a mystery with time travel and pretty good.
-- Gods, monsters, and the lucky peach by Kelly Robson involves time travel and the future, so you get some interesting body augmentations as well as culture clashes as people from our future investigate our far past.

If you don't mind involuntary time travel, a la Groundhog Day, Octavia Butler's Kindred is still excellent. (Sadly, the recent TV show just got canceled after one season.) Not the easiest of reads, as the Black protagonist travels back to the time of chattel slavery. Brilliant book.

In The time traveller's wife, one of the two main characters has a genetic disorder that causes spontaneous time travel. Niffenegger makes the intersecting timelines of the two characters look seamless. I don't know how much the movie resembles the book.

Another good read is Time and Time Again by Ben Elton full of twists and turns and handles the paradoxes of changing the course of history very well.

>30 karenb: I just looked at your profile and yes only 20 books in common. But I’ve only been active on LT for a few months. I see most books we are showing as in common are older books and I’m only gradually adding my older ones. I think the in common ones will increase as I complete my library. I’ve all the Lessing and Atkinson yet to enter for example

And yes I really like involuntary and change course of history time travel.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street series by Natasha Pulley has an interesting take on time travel and probability.

>22 majkia: How did I forget about The Pliocene Exile as a time travel series??? I never think of it that way, but of course it is!!

P.S. It is a fantastic series that does not get recommended enough.

I loved The Light Brigade. A bit brutal, but also subtle and very clever.

This list of "Top 10 Time Travel Books" was printed in the Guardian and shared here in Book Talk:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/341768#8067813

>36 Cecrow: Thanks, I had a look. Thr Guardian list (2009) is a bit dated now - there seem to be many writers, not just SF genre ones, doing time travel, in the past decade. I’m looking for something newish, but thanks for the tip.

>8 Betelgeuse: You beat me to it. There are a few of Asimov's books that really stand out, and The End of Eternity is one of them. It's suspenseful and has an interesting message. It should be made into a movie.

>38 MartyBrandon: how did I miss this Asimov? This has made my day. I must have missed >8 Betelgeuse: . I was very ill in February so somehow missed your post.
I really thought I’d read everything he’d ever written.
Looking forward to what I know will be a good read.

>40 AndreasJ:

Reading everything Asimov ever wrote would be quite an achievement! Even just the fiction is quite a bit.

>40 AndreasJ: oh I meant the fiction. I am quite old so it’s not much of an achievement.

>40 AndreasJ: I am pretty sure I had read all of his fiction, maybe with some never collected stories skipped (if any - I did try to track down quite a lot of stories a decade or so ago though) -- I am planning a chronological re-read through all his novels and stories (but then Asimov is my favorite author in any genre and had been for a couple of decades).

>41 kjuliff: >42 AnnieMod:

I'm impressed. My understanding is that he wrote approximately 500 books. I don't know how many of those are fiction, but I've read about a dozen, including a book of his short stories. Like Heinlein, his best books are among my favorites, but there are many (based on my sample) that are mediocre. I hope that one of you will identify the "must read" Asimov books.

>43 MartyBrandon: >42 AnnieMod: The new Bing query brings up the following
According to ISFDb, and discounting all alternate titles, translations and 2 non-genre novels ( The Death Dealers and Murder at the ABA ), Asimov wrote 37 novels:
This feels about right to me. I hope I’ve missed more than one. Possibly Marty you’ve seen alternate titles but in any case, writing 37 SF novels is quite an achievement.

>43 MartyBrandon: A mediocre Asimov can be better than some of the "good" stories these days so there is that. Which does not mean that there aren't a lot of great stories and novels these days or I do not have other favorites but his style works for me even in stories that otherwise do not shine...

Wikipedia gives: 40 novels, 383 short stories, over 280 non-fiction books, and edited about 147 other ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov_bibliography_(chronological) )

I know I had read all of the novels. Most of them in two languages (he became my favorite author long before I could read in English; then I made a point to read them all in English). I really do not remember if I ever tracked down all the stories - I know I tried but my notes from back then were lost a long time ago. And I read all as I was finding them. Thus my plan to start over and reread them in order - I had been doing that with a few other authors (with some occasional running ahead) and I had found that I really enjoy exploring authors I love that way.

>44 kjuliff: So 39 vs 40 on Wikipedia? Now I need to go figure out who is wrong... ;) I will be back when I figure it out (eventually).

>45 AnnieMod: Sounds like we both lean towards old-school scifi. It would be great if you kept track of your reread here in the chat. Others might want to participate.

Regarding time travel, I don't remember Asimov writing anything about it except in The End of Eternity. Are there other examples that I have not read?

>47 MartyBrandon: There was a short story--I think it was called "The Ugly Boy", if memory serves--in the Tomorrow's Children collection about a Neanderthal boy being brought forward in time.

>48 Marissa_Doyle: Thanks. Given his prolificacy and tendency to write series of related books, it seems that time travel maybe wasn't really Asimov's thing, despite The End of Eternity being a great work.

>48 Marissa_Doyle:, >49 MartyBrandon:
One of my favorite Asimov short stories on time travel was called "Blank!" You can find it in the anthology called Buy Jupiter and Other Stories. It's not profound or anything, but it's fun, and it's very short. It has a Twilight Zone feel to it. He also wrote a more forgettable tale called "A Loint of Paw," where a thief attempts to evade conviction by using time travel to take advantage of the statute of limitations.

>48 Marissa_Doyle: I really liked "The Ugly Boy". It was the last story in the collection Nine Tomorrow's. One day I want to read all of Asimov's books in narrative chronological order of his Robots/Empire/Foundation series. I read all of those as they were published decades ago. Reading them in chronological vs publication order will be an interesting reading experience, I think.

The End of Eternity has been in my TBR pile for a few years now. I must get to it. I have never read it.

>51 Neil_Luvs_Books: I don't like the 7 Foundation novels in chronological order - the prequels are over-hinting actions which are supposed to be a surprise (for the reader but also occasionally for the protagonist) in the main trilogy. They work better when used/viewed as "after this happened, someone went back and wrote a history of what happened before that" than as straight prequels. And because of that, they really work better after the main trilogy.

But YMMV. :)

>52 AnnieMod: you may be right!

>50 Betelgeuse: Thanks! Sounds like an interesting story. I saw Buy Jupiter and Other Stories on Amazon and will check it out sometime.

Two books come to mind: The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson (mentioned upthread), and Replay by Ken Grimwood. Both different than the usual takes on time travel. Oh, and I also love The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

>55 amysisson: Love Replay!

>55 amysisson: If you like Replay, you'll probably like The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. A similar premise, but much more complexity.

>55 amysisson: I enjoyed The Chronoliths. Would the Spin series by Robert Charles Wilson also be considered a sort of time travel story? Earth is placed in a bubble where time is slowed while the universe outside continues apace?

Has anyone yet pointed to this LT list of time travel novels? https://www.librarything.com/list/9/Best-Time-Travel-Novels

>59 Cecrow: Ooh! I love getting a new list of book ideas! Thanks for adding.

>59 Cecrow: Thanks. I chose the first one on the list. I don’t usually like books with X’s Wife in the title because I think it’s a ploy to get into the mass market. But in this case I’ll get over my weird hang-up and use this list as a basics.

>58 Neil_Luvs_Books:

I guess I didn't consider "Spin" to be time travel, but it has been a while since I read it. To me, it's surprising that "Spin" won awards whereas "The Chronoliths" did not, especially because I vaguely recall that if "Spin" had had a slightly different ending, it would have blown me away -- an opportunity not taken by the author, was how it felt to me personally. I didn't bother with the sequels.

>63 amysisson: I quite liked all three Spin novels. I really appreciated how the conclusion circled back to the beginning.

>64 Neil_Luvs_Books: Maybe I should give them a shot!

>59 Cecrow:. That list was started in 2012 and needs some updating, but it's an interesting list. I love LibraryThing lists.

About a year ago several of us did a group read of Arcadia, which involves time travel, cause and effect, and some good humor. I recommend it highly. Click the Conversations link on the book's page to see the list of threads. But you'll probably trip over a bunch of spoilers there, so read the book first!

>67 Jim53: looks intriguing. Thanks for this suggestion

>67 Jim53: Oh -- I didn't think of that either. It was very good, not surprising with Iain Pears.

>67 Jim53: I really enjoyed that read of Arcadia! I really want to re-read but have loaned my copy out and it has not yet come back to me... >:-/

>70 ScoLgo: I did too. It was one of my favorite books of last year. Hope you get it back soonish.

In addition to Arcadia you might try some creative searches with the new AI search:

Search:

Looking for a clever time-travel novel like "Arcadia" or "Sea of Tranquility." Exclude films and movies.

>72 conceptDawg: -- There's also the Larry Niven novel -- A World Out of Time, which is my favorite non-sequel novel from Larry Niven.

>2 Alexandro69: Thanks,
Reading Recursion

Breaking format here but a good time travel streaming series IMOHO is Travelers ; a somewhat believable process {to the under educated like myself perhaps}, where using a computer, data is transferred through an infinitesimally small worm hole to the past and programmed in a human brain.

>75 DugsBooks: i agree

>5 tardis: sounds like a great recommendation - just reserved it at the library :)

>26 ScoLgo: thats pretty much my experience with Willis timetravel books.
I tried To say nothing of the dog, but gave up on it, enjoyed Doomsday Book very much, which gave me a new appreciation of To say nothing of the dog when I returned to it afterwards. But Blackout was just very annoying to me, and I think I have given up on All clear.

>3 ScoLgo: I’ve been busy reading other genres and just came back to this thread. About to read Robert Heinlein’s All You Zombies. Thanks.

>75 DugsBooks:
I really enjoyed Travellers.

Time and Time again by Ben Elton is one of my faves

I found The Anubis Gates a little disappointing after all the hype, but I think Powers has gotten stronger as a writer since then. I'm currently reading Medusa's Web, which includes some time travel elements, and it's quite good.

one day all this will be yours

the first fifteen lives of Henry August