Time Travel Books or Movies

I am interested in books and movies that deal with time travel. I have only read couple of books about time travel (The Time Travelers Wife, and, Time and Again). Anyone have any favorites, recommendations, or suggestions?

How about

The Time Machine
or
Timeline
or
Guns of the South

Theyre all pretty good

VegeMite, Thanks for responding. I have heard of Time Machine (By H. G. Wells, I think) Timeline also seems very familiar. But I have never heard of Guns of the South, can you give me a little more info, please?

You could try Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper. I love her books, a feminine view of SF/Fantasy makes for a great, and original read. Beauty's one of my all time favourites

Timeline was written by Michel Crichton, it was made into a bad movie.

Guns of the South is about white supremacists traveling back in time and using modern tech to change the course of the Civil War. Its very amusing, written by Harry Turtledove

For me, while not a book or movie, the best time travel in science fiction, bar none, is the TV show Doctor Who. (old and new series)

I don't recall the author (it was someone from the 'golden age' of sci-fi) but a book called Farnham's Freehold had a bit of time travel in it.

"The Door Into Summer", I think that was written by Heinlein, or somebody again in that 'golden age', also has time travel.

Actually, a lot of sci-fi written at that time had time travel in it, especially in the short stories, it seems.

Some of the Star Trek stories involve time travel, if you have not already gotten into that.

Hmm, my mind is drawing a blank atm, but check authors like Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Arthur C Clarke, Alan Dean Foster, Frederick Pohl, Poul Anderson. They all wrote in the 'golden age' of sci-fi, as it has become known, about 50 or so years ago. I've read a bunch by all of those guys, and sometimes it kind of blurs together who wrote what, so one or two of them might not actually have any time travel stories, but between the bunch of them, there should be tons. They are all good authors, at any rate.

edit begins here:
Heh, I didn't even mention any movies. One of my favorite time travel movies was 'The Butterfly Effect". I would definitely recommend that one, if you haven't seen it. If you are one of the few who have not seen it, "Back to the Future" has time travel, and is also quite funny.

I just remembered Ray Bradbury has done time travel, too, at least in a shor story called 'the sound of thunder'. There might be more that I haven't thought of by him, or some I haven't seen, since I haven't read a lot by him.

[edit on 12-7-2006 by DragonsDemesne]

Thanks to everyone who responded. You all have given my some interesting choices. I am headed to the local library tomorrow to check out some of these books. I hope they have a good selection. If not I will try half-price books, or amazon.

[edit on 7/12/2006 by neo4116]

The Chronocide Mission
by Lloyd Biggle Jr.

The Hunger of Time
by Damien Broderick

Cronos
by Robert Silverberg

Across a Billion Years
by Robert Silverberg

Thebes of the Hundred Gates
by Robert Silverberg

If you have a PDA you can download these as e-books at e-reader.com

I've heard of a book, MISSING TIME by Terry Hansen. Is this a time travel book? I'd really like to read it.

Thanks Craig732, for the info on these books, I don't have a PDA,but I will put them on my list for reading. They sound great.

EMMYDOE, I went to amazon. com and searched for the missing times. From the description it seems to be about UFOS. Interesting...

Heres what amazon says:

Book Description
The Missing Times is an investigation into whether some of America's most influential news organizations, many of which have maintained close ties to the U.S. intelligence community, have willingly suppressed full and accurate news coverage of the UFO phenomenon for a variety of national- security reasons. After a "case study" of news coverage about UFO encounters at Montana nuclear-missile facilities, Hansen reveals the remarkable and persistent difference in UFO-related news coverage between local and national news organizations. The author then reviews the history of censorship and propaganda during the twentieth century. He explains how and why the elite news organizations work closely with government agencies during times of national crisis, and reviews the evidence for such media-government collusion over the course of the half-century-long UFO controversy.


EMMYDOECraig732

I read a book once by Orson Scott Card called “Treason”. It’s not about time travel at all, but they have this element that deals with time like I have never thought of before, it’s super creative.

One of the “tribes” (not like a native tribe, more like a group or kingdom) has learned to manipulate time. Speed it up or slow it down, effecting individuals or whole regions of space. It was fascinating, here is the book that has a whole theme and story, but one small element of the book regarding these time manipulators hooked my attention.

These people could speed up time so fast for themselves they would appear to disappear to everybody else, and everybody else would be basically frozen to them. But they could adjust it to what ever levels they wanted. Or they could affect and area and whoever entered it would be sped up or slowed down. It was fascinating.

Not exactly time travel, but certainly manipulation and I was hooked.

I can't believe that noone has mentioned this yet but my favorite time travel movie is Millinneum staring Cheryl Ladd and Kris Kristofferson. The acting is cheesy to say the least but the theme is great. Brief synopsis: Chery Ladd is part of a team of all women time travelers who's mission is to board doomed (destined to crash) airplanes in the present to rescue the passengers and bring them into the future to save the human race who has become sterile. Kris Kristofferson (who told this guy he could act anyway) plays an official who investigates crashes. Thier lives become intertwined when a mission goes bad and in the mahem that follows, a key piece of technology is left behind that could expose the teams existance. Cheryl has to get it back before they figure out the puzzle of what it is. KK's acting is so bad, that it totally makes the move....and whether intended or not some scenes are hilarious...watch the scene where Cherl and KK are eating dinner at what looks like a mall and how she disposes of her cigarette. hilarious.


I also liked Dean Koontz's book called Lightning though it tended to get lost in the details at time, but still good.

Someone mentioned Orsen Scott Card. I must say he is one of the best writers of all time. Several of his books deal with time travel but not in the contemporary sense.

One such book is The Worthing Saga. The "time travel" occurs when people are placed in stasis and wake up hundreds of years later. This is my favorite book of all time.

Ender's Game is the first book in a set of 6 books (I think it is 6, it might be more.) In this series "time travel" is achieved by faster-than-light-travel in which no time passes for the person traveling but dozens or hundreds of years can pass by for others.

Even all his other books that don't have the time travel theme are excellent reads.

Madeline L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time

Robert Heinlein - By His Bootstraps (not a novel, but still a very good story about time travel)

David Gerrold - The Man Who Folded Himself

James P. Hogan - Thrice Upon a Time

Nicholas Meyer - Time after Time

Ray Bradbury - A Sound of Thunder (again, not a novel, but probably one of the most famous time-travel stories. I think they made a movie out of this that disappeared faster than a bowl of icecream)

These are jsut some that I can think of. There's probably lots and lots more.



[edit on 19-7-2006 by Thekherham]

I just watched Primer last night and I will be watching it again tonight. Talk about a mindf**k on the first watch! Really interesting.

Thanks again to everyone for their great suggestions. I have started reading "The Door Into Summer. It is very good. I had read a few Robert Heinlein books years ago, I believe the titles were "Friday" and "Stranger in a Strange Land". I loved both these books.

Back in December I read "Ender's Game" and really enjoyed it. At some point I will probably read the rest of the series.

I watched Butterfly Effect the other night on cable, and I agree it is a good movie. I'm going to have to check out Primer and Millennium.
Thanks again

Yeah, I read Door into summer, Stranger in a strange land, ender's game, and saw butterfly effect. Those are all good.

To a lesser degree The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut deals with time travel.

One of the secondary characters is a time traveller who fortells the main characters entire life. The main character does his best to avoid it but ends up doing exactly what was predicted on his own.

It is an amazing book that highlights things like destiny, control and also manipulation. If he had never heard of this fate would it still have happened? And so on.

Originally posted by DragonsDemesne
I don't recall the author (it was someone from the 'golden age' of sci-fi) but a book called Farnham's Freehold had a bit of time travel in it.

"The Door Into Summer", I think that was written by Heinlein, or somebody again in that 'golden age', also has time travel.

Both Farnhams's Freehold and The Door into Summer were written by Heinlein and are great reads.

First, I would like to recommend two books by Philip K. Dick: "Time out of joint" and "The man in the high castle"; neither are about time travel in the strictest sense of the word but are about "time" and alternate realities which to me is even more interesting. I think both are out of print, so you will probably need to look around places like eBay, Alibris.com or other used book sites.

One of my favorite time travel books was written about 100 years ago; it's called a Conecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court, by Mark Twain and is very entertaining.
Also, I highly recommend the following books: " The best Time Travel Stories of the Century" Edited by Harry Turtledove; "Time's Arrow" by Arthur C. Clarke; "Tales out of time" by Ray Bradbury; "Dracula Unbound" by Brian Aldiss and " Up the Line" by Clifford Simak

Movies: "Twelve Monkeys";"Time Bandits"; Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and , of course, The "Back to the future" series.

Later

LS

Is there anything sci-fi that's better than Dune? With a world plaugued with water worries as propagated by the increasing desertification of a world now overpopulated, Dune is about to happen a lot sooner than original estimates. Of course we'll terraform Mars, but not before we do so to the Sahara Desert first.

[edit on 22-8-2006 by risitar]