Time Travel

[DDHarriman]

Could not agree more, the book and the movie have nothing to do with each other.
I think if Heinlein was alive he would do some really bad thing to Verhoeven.

BTW: one of the biggest worst assassinations of a book I have ever seen.
I more or less respected the guy (Verhoeven) from his good movie “Turkish Delight” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070842/), but after this… no more.

[astra]

Finished Farnham’s Freehold.
Not bad. Some interesting notions and ideas, although I could not stand the protagonist, big bully, Hugh.
I agree with Nate the great that cannibalism was out of place.

[alexxxm]

what ... nobody mentioned yet "The End of Eternity" by Asimov?
Highly recommanded - although years after reading too many of his books my love for him cooled down a bit.

alessandro

[alexxxm]

... or, what about (after removing a lot of dust from it) "The Big Time" by Fritz Leiber?
A great (Hugo 1958) novel placed in a night club out of time, for tired time travelers

alessandro

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by alexxxm

... or, what about (after removing a lot of dust from it) "The Big Time" by Fritz Leiber?
A great (Hugo 1958) novel placed in a night club out of time, for tired time travelers

alessandro

Well, for more than tired time travellers.

The Big Time is set against the background of the Change War, as the Snakes and the Spiders, two far future civilizations, attempt to change the past to make things come out as they prefer. The nightclub is a rest stop for agents of the Spiders between missions. We never really see Snakes or Spiders, and see things only from the view of the Spider's agents, who aren't always entirely certain what they are doing or why. I think that's intentional: how many grunts on the line ever have a clear appreciation of the causes or stakes of the war they are fighting, or the part they are playing in it? That comes after, if at all, assuming they survive.

For another take on the topic, see J. R. Dunn's _Days of Cain_. Monitor Gaspar is a present time agent of the Moiety, a very far future civilization. Gaspar's job is to monitor the time line and prevent attempts to change history. His job is complicated when he is assigned to stop a rogue female Moiety agent. The agent has decided that since the capability to change history exists, the Moiety should endeavor to do so, to retroactively prevent various great atrocities.

She has decided the tipping point is the Holocaust, and plans, with the help of recruited followers and forbidden future weapons, to deal a decisive crippling blow to Nazi Germany well before the end would normally happen. Gaspar's mission is complicated by his developing feelings for her, and after seeing first hand the horrors done by the Nazis, a suspicion that she is right in her thesis that the Moiety is immoral for not intervening.

At the end, we discover more about the Moiety, and why they wish to see history unchanged, atrocities and all. The reasons are far greater than a simple "don't change what led to us", but don't please Gaspar, and may not please you.
______
Dennis

[Greg Anos]

I'm late to the thread, but here's some odds and ends. Each is a failure as a time-travel story (from a readability aspect), but worth a gander if the underlying mileau appeals...

Horror - H.P. Lovcraft's The Shadow Out Of Time. Literally Lovecraft meets JW Campbell. It's a time travel horror story. Available in the Lovecraft collection here at MR.

19th century Utopian fiction. If you liked Looking Backwards by Bellamy, try The Crystal Button by Chauncey Thomas. If you can't put your head back into the 19th century mindset, don't try reading it, it'll be dull as dishwater. Free e-book (in TXT and HTML) at Project Gutenberg Australia (scanned, OCR-proofed, and uploaded by yours truly.)

A minor Heinlein short story, not mentioned yet, called Elsewhen. I find the story weak, but the underlying idea endlessly fascinating. There's a great novel (or novels) buried in there for some writer to write someday....

[nekokami]

The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card is a fairly interesting time travel story, though I felt it ultimately fell short on addressing the most intriguing questions it posed.

In particular, Card sets up a moral dilemma: is the misery of countless generations justified by the resulting society? If the resulting society develops technology which would change that prior misery, but would result in the extinction of that future society (disregarding the paradox involved), do they have a moral justification to do so?

Spoiler:

However, ultimately Card's future society realizes they are going to starve anyway, so the question of their continued survival is moot and the moral dilemma disappears. I thought this was an extremely weak direction for the story to take. I really can't understand why Card went that way. It didn't fit the rest of the story at all. I'm tempted to suspect editorial interference of some kind, though Card is such a "big name" that it might have been interference from someone other than a professional editor-- a close friend, etc.

On a lighter note, I've forgotten, did we already cover Niven's Rainbow Mars in this thread? Really a collection of extremely silly time travel stories, loosely strung together into a book. Great fun.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card is a fairly interesting time travel story, though I felt it ultimately fell short on addressing the most intriguing questions it posed.

In particular, Card sets up a moral dilemma: is the misery of countless generations justified by the resulting society? If the resulting society develops technology which would change that prior misery, but would result in the extinction of that future society (disregarding the paradox involved), do they have a moral justification to do so?

Spoiler:

However, ultimately Card's future society realizes they are going to starve anyway, so the question of their continued survival is moot and the moral dilemma disappears. I thought this was an extremely weak direction for the story to take. I really can't understand why Card went that way. It didn't fit the rest of the story at all. I'm tempted to suspect editorial interference of some kind, though Card is such a "big name" that it might have been interference from someone other than a professional editor-- a close friend, etc.

Or perhaps Card either didn't realize the real question he was asking, or simply didn't have an answer, or perhaps decided any answer he might propose would ultimately be unsatisfying to too many readers.

That's the problem with those big moral quandaries: how do you resolve them?

In James Blish's _A Case of Conscience_, an interplanetary expedition has discovered an alien race who apparently without original sin. This is a real quandary for the Jesuit priest aboard, for by his theology, if truly without original sin, they must be a creation of Satan, and therefore evil, yet they are outwardly as thoroughly admirable a race as might be imagined.

Spoiler:

Blish sidesteps answering the question by having the alien race destroyed, leaving the question unanswerable.

For another take, we have Ursula K. Leguin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas". Leguin postulates a future society which is a utopia, free from want, fear, illness, and war, save for one small, sick, helpless child, whose misery somehow permits all else. Every year, some folks leave Omelas, to exist in what is apparently far less pleasant circumstances, because they can't live pleasant lives based on another's suffering. But Leguin isn't trying to answer the question she seems to be asking. If you think she's coming down on a particular side, read the story again.

Her real question, I think, is "What, exactly, is moral behavior?", and her answer is that each of us must decide for ourselves what the questions are and what our answers must be.
______
Dennis

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Or perhaps Card either didn't realize the real question he was asking, or simply didn't have an answer, or perhaps decided any answer he might propose would ultimately be unsatisfying to too many readers.

That's the problem with those big moral quandaries: how do you resolve them?

I agree that it's a problem, and they don't have to be resolved. I just felt that Card spent most of the book setting up this particular question, and then didn't address it. (I've read the Blish book, and I've heard of that Le Guin book, though I haven't read it yet. I probably should.)

I think one can tell a story that asks a moral question without answering it. And I don't have a problem with stories that really show how one way of trying to resolve a moral question falls out, and allow the reader to draw their own conclusions on whether the outcome is satisfactory or not. I just think it's jarring to the reader to set up a story in which it looks as though a moral question is going to be dealt with-- even unsatisfactorily-- and then abandon it.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I agree that it's a problem, and they don't have to be resolved. I just felt that Card spent most of the book setting up this particular question, and then didn't address it. (I've read the Blish book, and I've heard of that Le Guin book, though I haven't read it yet. I probably should.)

"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" is a short story, in her collection "The Wind's Twelve Quarters".

I think one can tell a story that asks a moral question without answering it. And I don't have a problem with stories that really show how one way of trying to resolve a moral question falls out, and allow the reader to draw their own conclusions on whether the outcome is satisfactory or not. I just think it's jarring to the reader to set up a story in which it looks as though a moral question is going to be dealt with-- even unsatisfactorily-- and then abandon it.

Oh, agreed. I think it's a failure for the reasons that you do. It's structurally unsound. It's like the old adage about the theater: "If you place a gun in a dresser drawer in the first act, you must pull it out and shoot someone with it by the third act." If you fail to do so, it's a fundamental error in drama -- why have the gun in the first place?

I think Card painted himself into a corner, then chose to blithely ignore the fact.
______
Dennis

[leveck]

Originally Posted by astra

All You Zombies by Robert Heinlein

Is it a long book?

The whole text of this story is linked to at the bottom of the wikipedia artical, which is how I made it a lrf file last month: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_You_Zombies%E2%80%94

[leveck]

The BBC offers several Dr. Who e-books for free here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/ebooks/

[besca147]

Originally Posted by Lamdil

I have been reading time travel novels since 1954 and continue to be a huge fan of it. In the last fifty years I have seen titles change from "New Release" to "Classic". Here are just a few:

Time Machine
A Sound of Thunder
Replay
Time and Again

There are some newer novels which in time will eventually be deemed classics as well in the not too distant future.

Lightning
STR8 BOLT
The Time Travelers Wife
Timeline
Timescape

It's just a matter of time.

Is that Lightning you mentioned there the one by Dean Koontz?

If so, it's a really good read. I've got it in paperback.

[Phogg]

There is Alexander Key's Sword of Aradel.

[wayspooled]

Thought of a few more,

The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers

The Time Axis by Henry Kuttner

In The Garden of Iden by Kage Baker (this is one of 4 or 5 time travel books by Baker in a series)

Originally Posted by wayspooled

How about the first one I ever read "A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court"
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/t#a53

or Poul Anderson's Time Patrol novels.. can find at Baen Free Books
except this particular one and the others in the series are 5 bucks. In fact, you can find quite a few of the books there cheaply, like the Andre Norton ones someone else listed.
http://www.baen.com

My favorite though is still Connie Willis and "To Say Nothing of the Dog" which someone else suggested. A number of hers deal with time travel. The Doomsday Book is another, dealing with the plague in the middle ages England.

"Planet Of The Apes" by Pierre Boulle was actually a far better book than the cheesy movie it has long been.

To Your Scattered Bodies Go (of the Riverworld series by Philip Jose Farmer) is fascinating. The main char dies and winds up somewhere populated by everyone who has ever died on earth. It's different

Gordon Dickson's Time storm
Robert Adam's Castaways In Time
Julian May's The Many Colored Land
Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/139

Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Land That Time Forgot
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/551

David Drake's Time Safari
R A MacAvoy's The Book of Kells
Vernor Vinge's Marooned in Realtime (bobbling forward not backward like most) Can also be found in the omnibus "Across Realtime" with a short story and another time travel novel of his.

Joshua Dann's Timeshare, easy to read escapist