Time Travel...

"When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not." -Yoda

Time is an interesting thing to play with. First, there were time machines, devices to allow us to move forward or backward (but rarely both) in time, to illustrate some social principle or other, or just for a rollicking good adventure. Then there was lost time, due to space travel or cryogenics. Finally, with the advent of quantum physics came alternate time-lines, worlds in which something didn't quite happen the same way, so that all of its future was changed. These are the ultimate "what if" experiments- a remarkable number of them end unhappily, or are extremely disturbing. They are also quite enlightening. What better way to "show" instead of "tell" than to bend time itself to your will?

Time Travel

• Douglas Adams
  • "Life, the Universe, and Everything" (The world will end if the mysterious robots retrieve all the pieces of the cricket gate out of time. Humor.)
• Madeleine L'Engle
  • An Acceptable Time (A conjunction of places send Poly back and forth between her grandmother's home and an ancient tribe- some of whom thinks she is meant to be a sacrifice.)
  • Many Waters (Twins Sandy and Dennys accidentally transport themselves somewhere warm- the desert world of Noah, right before the Flood.)
  • A Swiftly Tilting Planet (Charles Wallace joins forces with a Pegasus to defeat a growing evil in a multitude of different worlds, including alternate histories of Earth.)
• Sharon L. Reddy
  • "Paradox Equation" (A race of time travellers fight against the evil in the universe.)

Alternate Time Lines

• Harry Turtledove
  • The Two Georges (America never had a revolution- until the end of the 20th century)
  • "Worldwar Saga" (In 1942, just as the war is heating up, aliens descend on Earth)
• Peter David
  • Q-Squared (Q's young prodigy is slowly crushing the timelines into one another because he thinks there should be no alternate universes.)
• Robert Heinlein
  • The Number of the Beast (A family escapes from Earth as it is being destroyed, then wanders through alternate universes, including ones created by people's imaginations.)
  • Assignment in Eternity (One of the novellas stars Professor Frost and 5 of his metaphysics students who learn to travel through time and across it)

Lost Time

• Anne McCaffrey
  • The Death of Sleep (Lunzie Mespil got has a curse- every time she travels through space, she ends up in a cryogenic tank, losing her life's precious time.)
• C. J. Cherryh
  • "Merchanter Novels" (The merchanters, zipping between stations at high speeds, live long, strange lives compared to their stationer counterparts. Includes Merchanter's Luck, Finity's End, Tripoint, and Rimrunners.)
• Joe Haldeman
  • The Forever War (The vets of this war are from centuries past.)
• Robert Heinlein
  • The Door Into Summer (Dan Davis, like his cat, goes back in time to relive his life, checking each door, looking for happiness.)
  • Time for the Stars (One telepathic twin stays on Earth, one goes with the ship, and communication is perfect. Except that the one on Earth grows older....)
• Ursula K. Le Guin
  • "Ecumenical Future" (In this universe, movement between planets requires time- those who leave home can never go back.)

This page owned by: Raven
Questions? Comments? Smart Remarks?
Email me at [email protected]
Last Updated: October 14, 1999

(Main Page) (Categories) (Awards)
(Authors) (Titles) (Top 100) (Rewrites)

Background image created by Queen's Free World.