Can anyone recomend some good books on time travel, fiction and non fiction?

Answer 1

Here is a summary of the greatest time travel novel of its time, you still have to read the whole book to appreciate it. It was also made into a movie.

The Time Machine by H.G Wells.

The book's protagonist is an amateur inventor or scientist living in London who is never named; he is identified simply as The Time Traveller. Having demonstrated to friends using a miniature model that time is a fourth dimension, and that a suitable apparatus can move back and forth in this fourth dimension, he completes the building of a larger machine capable of carrying himself. He then immediately sets off on a journey into the future.

The Time Traveller details the experience of time travel and the evolution of his surroundings as he moves through time. While travelling through time, his machine allows him to observe the changes of the outside world in fast motion. He observes the sun and moon traversing the sky and the changes to the buildings and landscape around him as he travels through time. His machine produces a sense of disorientation to its occupant, and a blurring or faintness of the surroundings outside the machine.

His journey takes him to the year 802,701 A.D. where he finds an apparently peaceful, pastoral, communist,[1] future filled with happy, simple humans who call themselves the Eloi. The Eloi are about four feet tall (~120cm), pink-skinned and frail-looking, with curly hair, small ears and mouths and large eyes. Males and females seem to be quite similar in build and appearance. They have high-pitched, soft voices and speak an unknown language. They appear to be quite unintelligent and child-like and live without quarrels or conflict.

Soon after his arrival he rescues Weena, a female Eloi he finds drowning in a river. Much to his surprise she is grateful to him and insists on following him.

The Eloi live in small communities within large and futuristic yet dilapidated buildings, doing no work and eating a frugivorous diet. The land around London has become a sort of untended garden filled with unusual fruiting and flowering plants, with futuristic, albeit broken down buildings and other structures dotted around, seemingly of no purpose and disused. There is no evidence of the implementation of agriculture or technology, both of which the Eloi seem incapable.

The Time Traveller is greeted with curiosity and without fear by the Eloi, who seem only vaguely surprised and curious by his appearance and lose interest rapidly. He disables the time machine and follows them to their commune and consumes a meal of fruit while trying to communicate with them. This proves somewhat ineffectual, as their unknown language and low intelligence hinders the Time Traveller from gaining any useful information. With a slight sense of disdain for his hosts' lack of curiosity and attention to him, the Time Traveller decides to explore the local area.

As he explores this landscape, the Time Traveller comments on the factors that have resulted in the Eloi's physical condition and society. He supposes that the lack of intelligence and vitality of the Eloi are the logical result of humankind's past struggle to transform and subjugate nature through technology, politics, art and creativity. With the realisation of this goal, the Eloi had devolved.

With no further need for technology and agriculture and innovations to improve life, they became unimaginative and incurious about the world. With no work to do, they became physically weak and small in stature. Males, generally being breadwinners and workers in former times, have particularly degenerated in physique, explaining the lack of dimorphism between the sexes. The Time Traveller supposes that preventive medicine has been achieved, as he saw no sign of disease amongst his hosts. With no work to do and no hardships to overcome, society became non-hierarchical and non-cooperative, with no defined leaders or social classes.

The fact that there was no hardship or inequalities in societies meant there was no war and crime. Art and sophisticated culture, often driven by problems and aspirations or a catalyst for solutions and new developments, had waned, as no problems existed and there were no conceivable improvements for humanity. He accounted for their relatively small numbers as being due to the implementation of some form of birth control to eliminate the problems of overpopulation. The abandoned structures around him would suggest that prior to these achievements, the population had been larger and more productive, toiling to find the solution that would make the new utopia a reality.

As the sun sets, the Time Traveller muses on where he will sleep. Retracing his steps back to the building where he had eaten with the Eloi, he suddenly realizes that the time machine is missing. He panics and desperately searches for the vehicle. At first, he suspects that the Eloi have moved it to their shelter. He doubts the Eloi would be capable or inclined to do this, but nonetheless rushes back to the shelter and demands to know where his machine is. The Eloi are confused and a little frightened by this. Realising the Eloi don't understand him and he is damaging his position with them, he continues his search in desperation during the night before relenting and falling into an uneasy sleep.

The Utopian existence of the Eloi turns out to be deceptive. The Traveller soon discovers that the class structure of his own time has in fact persisted, and the human race has diverged into two branches. The wealthy, leisure classes appear to have devolved into the ineffectual, not very bright Eloi he has already seen; but the downtrodden working classes have evolved into the bestial Morlocks, cannibal hominids resembling human spiders, who toil underground maintaining the machinery that keep the Eloi – their flocks – docile and plentiful. Both species, having adapted to their routines, are of distinctly sub-human intelligence.

After further adventures the Traveller manages to get to his machine, reactivate it as the Morlocks battle him for it, and escape them. He then travels into the far future, roughly 30 million years from his own time.

There he sees the last few living things on a dying Earth, the rotation of which has ceased with the site of London viewing a baleful, red sun stuck at the setting position. In his trip forward, he had seen the red sun flare up brightly twice, as if Mercury and then Venus had fallen into it. Menacing reddish crab-like creatures slowly wander the blood-red beaches, and the world is covered in "intensely green vegetation." He continues to make short jumps through time, seeing the red giant of a sun grow redder and dimmer. Finally, the world begins to go dark as snowflakes begin to fall, and all silence falls upon Earth. In the very end of the Earth, all life has ceased, other than the lichens that still grow on rocks, and a kraken-like creature, roughly the size of a soccer ball, that slowly moves onto shore.

Feeling giddy and nauseated about the return journey before him, he nevertheless boards his machine and puts it into reverse, arriving back in his laboratory just three hours after he originally left. Entering the dining room, he begins recounting what has just happened to his disbelieving friends and associates, bringing the story back full circle to his entrance in chapter 2. The following day, the unnamed narrator returns to the Time Traveller's house. There, he finds the Time Traveller ready to leave again, this time taking a small knapsack and a camera. Although he promises the narrator he will return in half an hour, three years pass and the Time Traveller still remains missing. What happened to him, and where he ultimately ventured, remains a mystery...

Answer 2

Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction by Paul J. Nahin (non fiction)

Brasyl - Ian McDonald (Three characters, three stories, three Brazils, all linked together across time, space, and reality)

The Time Machine - HG Wells

Pebble in the Sky - Isaac Asimov

Kindred - Octavia Butler

Timeline - Michael Crichton

Outlander - Diana Gabaldon

The Callahan Chronicals - Spider Robinson

Answer 3

The Time Travelers Wife

Answer 4

Single best one ever? The End of Eternity by Asimov.
Worst one ever? The Time Traveler's Wife
Honorable Mention? Timeline by Michael Crichton

A good place to start? The Best Time Travel Stories, compiled/edited by Harry Turtledove

Answer 5

i have a real thing for celtic time travel novels, i loved The Singing Stone, and The Hunter's Moon by O.R. Melling. and check out Marianne Curley as well, she's written Old Magic which is set firstly in present day austrailia and then in medieval scotish/english boarderlands, and her Guardians Of Time trilogy is excellent, visiting many different times and places. and then theres the Stravaganza series by Mary Hoffman in which the characters move between modern day england and 16th century italy-with-a-twist. they're all great books, each with a hint of magic and romance...hope this helps!

Answer 6

"Who Threw The Clock?"

This is an incredible histical period drama novel concerning the movement of time through space, that will be written by me at some time in the future.

As I haven't written it yet, it is at present a work of fiction.

My answer here means that it is also non fiction.

Hope you enjoy reading it.

As an afterthought, I watched the old black and white film 'The Shape Of Things To Come' which I think was written by H.G.Wells, on TV a few nights ago.

Can't say that I ever read the book, but I can well imagine that it could be quite a good read.

Answer 7

The books by Diana Gabaldon Outlander sereis where the woman goes back in time to Scotland. They are really good. She is able to actually go back in time and then come back to her time a few times in the different books.

Answer 8

"The Time Machine," by H.G. Wells is an excellent book. I don't know of any non-fiction time travel books.

Answer 9

the Time Traveller's Wife is excellent. i have also read and enjoyed the books by Diana Gabaldon...the series starts with Cross Stitch and the heroine ,Claire, walks through a stone circle and ends up in Scotland just before Culloden.

Answer 10

the Time Travellers Wife is cheesy and about as physically and logically possible as Donnie Darko.

Stephen Hawkings 'Brief history of time' is intruiging, but he has been proven wrong, so take everything he says with a pinch of salt.

I recommend Hitchhikers, since Douglas Adams already knows that he's just making it up as he writes it, and doesn't take it too seriously.

Answer 11

Household Gods by Harry Turtledove with Judith Tarr. Just when you think you're having a bad day. . . This is a terrific book!