Time Travel

[Utahcowboy]

"The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman is a sort of time travel story in the sense of time dilation by space travel, and it is one of the best sci fi novels ever written. I highly recommend it.

[vivaldirules]

My favorite: Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. I always wanted to meet Montana Wildhack.

[kmack]

Originally Posted by Utahcowboy

"The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman is a sort of time travel story in the sense of time dilation by space travel, and it is one of the best sci fi novels ever written. I highly recommend it.

I'll second that, interesting take on one-way time travel.

Short story wise I would like to suggest L. Sprague de Camp's
"A gun for Dinosaur" I think it is available at Fictionwise.

[badgoodDeb]

Oh my .... you mean I get to be the first person to mention the

Outlander series, by Diana Gabaldon?

Yumm! Not free, but I read them all in ebook format on my Palm pda. The premise is that a gal steps through some UK standing stones at the right (or wrong) time of year, and lands in 1743, in Jacobite England. Not overly SF, but heavy on the history and romance. Heck, even my husband devoured them as avidly as I did!

Diana Gabaldon:
Outlander
Dragonfly in Amber
Voyager
Drums of Autumn
The Fiery Cross
A Breath of Snow and Ashes

[Detour]

I can't believe no one mentioned Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" series. Maybe someone did and I missed it. If you're a fan of Terry Pratchett, Christopher Moore, Douglas Adams, then you'll love Fforde's work. Time travel plus laugh till it hurts.

Thursday Next:
The Eyre Affair (2001)
Lost in a Good Book (2002)
The Well of Lost Plots (2003)
Something Rotten (2004)
First Among Sequels (2007)

[DDHarriman]

For me, Heinlein and always Heinlein…

One of the best: “Farnham's Freehold”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnham%27s_Freehold

Best,

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by DDHarriman

For me, Heinlein and always Heinlein…

One of the best: “Farnham's Freehold”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnham%27s_Freehold

I concur on Heinlein, but we part company on Farnham's Freehold. I consider that one of his weaker novels for structural reasons.

Consider the premise: a group of suburban folks find themselves catapulted 50,000 years into the future, courtesy of a direct hit from a nuclear weapon in the early stages of WWIII. After various adventures, they find a way to travel back in time to the present that they left, and we see them sitting in a house at the top of a hill surrounded by barbed wire, trading for books, and looking for partners for bridge.

The sojourn in the future gave Heinlein the soapbox he could stand on to make caustic commentaries about the likely future results of current trends, but the method he used to get there left a bit to be desired. (Fritz Lieber covered that same territory in one of his works, and handled it better.)

I wondered about the situation at the end, with his protagonists safely back in their own time and doing about as well as could be done in a post-nuclear holocaust world. I wondered how they got there. What were things like after the Bomb? How did they re-establish themselves in the resulting chaos in relative comfort and security? I wish Heinlein had written that book, rather than the one he did.
______
Dennis

[DDHarriman]

I will not discuss this of course, as in reading it’s always one preference and that suffices me.

I just let 2 ideas on the table:

1 - with Heinlein the “adventures” are not important the people and the message are;
2 - you say “After various adventures, they find a way to travel back in time to the present that they left”… the thing is they did not come back to the same place they left, did they?!!!!...

I’, very happy to find a Heinlein’s fan - probably my problem is that I can find almost no book from Heinlein who is not to the highest level.

Best regards,

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by DDHarriman

I will not discuss this of course, as in reading it’s always one preference and that suffices me.

I just let 2 ideas on the table:

1 - with Heinlein the “adventures” are not important the people and the message are;

That's a two edged sword.

Consider H. G. Wells. He was a Fabian Socialist. As he went on, he became more concerned with pushing a Socialist agenda, and less concerned with telling a story. His work became progressively less readable in consequence.

The message is indeed important, but how you can convey it can be the difference between whether or not anybody heeds it.

People read stories. Propaganda is another matter.

2 - you say “After various adventures, they find a way to travel back in time to the present that they left”… the thing is they did not come back to the same place they left, did they?!!!!...

Doesn't matter.

At the end of the book, they are ensconced in their house on a hill, as well off as one can be in a country after a nuclear war. We see nothing of how they achieved that. We go directly from getting back from the future to (relatively) happy ending. There's a great story to be told about exactly how people would survive, dig out from under, and begin the task of rebuilding a society after a nuclear dust up. Heinlein could have done wonders with it. That wasn't the story he wanted to tell, alas.

The late Damon Knight commented "If it reads like it could have been set in Australia, it probably should have been!" Something like that applies here. Heinlein wanted to tell a particular story, but used a clumsy framing device to do so. It's the fact that he was so good a writer in other efforts that makes it so annoying when he slips.

I’, very happy to find a Heinlein’s fan - probably my problem is that I can find almost no book from Heinlein who is not to the highest level.

I can. _Fifth Column_, based on a John W. Campbell outline. It's a tribute to RAH's skill that it's readable at all, given what he had to work with. I'm less than thrilled with _Beyond This Horizon_, too, among others.
______
Dennis

[nekokami]

I agree with DMcCunney about the weakness of these particular Heinlein works. Heinlein will always be one of my favorite authors, but, to paraphrase one of his own characters, "Even the immortal Bob had his off days." (From Starman Jones, though the original reference was to William Shakespeare.)

[mazzeltjes]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I concur on Heinlein, but we part company on Farnham's Freehold. I consider that one of his weaker novels for structural reasons.

Consider the premise: a group of suburban folks find themselves catapulted 50,000 years into the future, courtesy of a direct hit from a nuclear weapon in the early stages of WWIII. After various adventures, they find a way to travel back in time to the present that they left, and we see them sitting in a house at the top of a hill surrounded by barbed wire, trading for books, and looking for partners for bridge.

The sojourn in the future gave Heinlein the soapbox he could stand on to make caustic commentaries about the likely future results of current trends, but the method he used to get there left a bit to be desired. (Fritz Lieber covered that same territory in one of his works, and handled it better.)

I wondered about the situation at the end, with his protagonists safely back in their own time and doing about as well as could be done in a post-nuclear holocaust world. I wondered how they got there. What were things like after the Bomb? How did they re-establish themselves in the resulting chaos in relative comfort and security? I wish Heinlein had written that book, rather than the one he did.
______
Dennis

I'm a big Heinlein fan
but Farnhams Freehold is a
racist piece of thrash
"By his Bootstraps"
also by Heinlein is one
of the best time travel stories ever

[astra]

Originally Posted by mazzeltjes

I'm a big Heinlein fan
but Farnhams Freehold is a
racist piece of thrash
"By his Bootstraps"
also by Heinlein is one
of the best time travel stories ever

Racist? Whom does Heinlein discriminate there?
I am curious, I have not read this book.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by astra_lestat

Racist? Whom does Heinlein discriminate there?
I am curious, I have not read this book.

I wouldn't call it racist, but I do agree that it's not his best. Heinlein went for a cheap shock of cannibalism rather than trying to do a real social commentary on our times.

But in his defense, we don't know if he developed that part of the story by himself, or if he was pushed into it by his editor. I think it was the latter.

[Gaurnim]

Originally Posted by Detour

I can't believe no one mentioned Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" series. Maybe someone did and I missed it. If you're a fan of Terry Pratchett, Christopher Moore, Douglas Adams, then you'll love Fforde's work. Time travel plus laugh till it hurts.

Fforde's work has been mentioned in this thread :
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13273

As a great fan of this work, though, I'm always happy when someone mentions him ;-)

[Xenophon]

Has anyone in this thread recommended Connie Willis' book "To Say Nothing of the Dog"? A wonderful time travel book, with time travelers returning to Victorian England (among other times and places) to retrieve "the Bishop's Birdstump" from Coventry Cathedral. Except they don't know what the I^*&*&(T the darn thing is! And they're spaced out from too many time-travel jaunts in too little elapsed (personal) time. And the briefing was bollixed up. And...

A splendid book. Side-splittingly funny. And even more so if you've read "Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K. Jerome. (And if you haven't, you should. My sister described him to her children as "the Victorian's Dave Barry." Another hysterically funny book.)

Xenophon