Time Travel Sources

This is a Bibliography page for useful resources in the Time Travel genre.

Sources

Books

• Asprin, Robert and Linda Evans
  • The Time Scout series— An inexplicable disaster has left tears in reality permitting travel into the past. These portals are now a source of commercial activity and professional Time Scouts are hired to venture into them.
    • Time Scout (1995)
    • Wagers of Sin (1995)
    • Ripping Time (2000)
    • The House that Jack Built (2000)
  • For King and Country (2002) — Unrelated to the Time Scout books. A police officer is sent via psychic time travel to the Middle Ages where he must prevent a terrorist from assassinating King Arthur. It's an interesting interpretation of the Arthur mythos from a somewhat more historical angle.
• Baxter, Stephen
  • The Time Ships (1995) — Officially authorized sequel to The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (see below).
  • Parts of the Manifold series, particularly:
    • Time (1999)
    • Origin (2001)
  • The Time's Tapestry series — A mysterious person known as the Weaver tries to change history simply by inserting a prophecy along with instructions. He comes close to succeeding several times.
    • Emperor (2006)
    • Conqueror (2007)
    • Navigator (2007)
    • Weaver (2008)
  • Timelike Infinity (1992)
• Baxter, Stephen and Arthur C. Clarke
  • A Time Odyssey series
• Blumenthal, Howard J.; Dorothy F. Curley and Brad Williams
  • The Complete Time Traveler: A Tourist's Guide to the Fourth Dimension — A splendid book exploring the possibilities and ramifications of commercial time travel, and specifically, time tourism.
• Bradbury, Ray
  • "A Sound of Thunder" (1952) — Time tourists go back in time to hunt dinosaurs. Just be sure to stay on the path!
• Finney, Jack
  • Time and Again (1970) — A classic tale of psychic time travel
  • About Time (1986) — A collection of short stories involving time travel by a master of the genre
• Frankowski, Leo
  • The Conrad Stargard series — A young Polish engineer accidentally enters a time machine and finds himself in the Middle Ages where he has only a few years to build up the local technology before the Mongols invade.
    • The Cross-Time Engineer (1988)
    • The High-Tech Knight (1989)
    • The Radiant Warrior (1989)
    • The Flying Warlord (1989)
    • Lord Conrad's Lady (1990)
• Gerrold, David
  • The Man Who Folded Himself (1973) — After "By His Bootstraps", the second classic Time-Traveler-Meeting-Himself story.
• Harrison, Harry
  • The Technicolor Time Machine (1967) — A movie studio tries making a viking movie on the cheap by using a time machine to shoot on location.
• Hawke, Simon
  • The Time Wars series — The initial premise — in the future nations have ended war by doing all their fighting in the past — is kind of silly, but provides an excuse for an excellent series about "Time Commandos" who are sent to fix things when time gets screwed up. The heroes frequently find themselves encountering characters generally assumed to be literary, such as Wilfred of Ivanhoe or the Scarlet Pimpernel. There are a dozen books in all; these are some of my favorites:
    • The Ivanhoe Gambit (1984)
    • The Pimpernel Plot (1984)
    • The Nautilus Sanction (1985)
    • The Argonaut Affair (1987)
    • The Dracula Caper (1988)
• Hawkings, Stephen W.
  • A Brief History of Time (1988) — Nonfiction book explaining a lot of the nuts and bolts behind Quantum Phyisics, Relativity and the Origin of the Universe.
• Heinlein, Robert
  • "All You Zombies" (1959) — short story that takes the Grandfather Paradox and folds, staples and mutilates it.
  • "By His Bootstraps" (1941) — The classic Time-Traveler-Meeting-Himself story
• Mitchell, Kirk
  • Never the Twain (1987) — A descendant of the writer Bret Hart is convinced that Mark Twain cheated his ancestor of the success and fame he deserved; and so he tries using time travel to sabotage Twain's career.
• Fred Saberhagen
  • Pyramids (1987) — Involves a time portal to Ancient Egypt and an enigmatic time traveller.
  • After the Fact (1988) — The hero is dragooned into a plot to go back in time to save Abraham Lincoln
• Twain, Mark
  • A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) — The ur-example of a time traveler trying to build up the technology of a primitive era. Not to subtle in the satire department, but funny nonetheless.
• Wells, H.G.
  • The Time Machine (1895) — The original. An inventor travels to the distant future and witnesses the results of social evolution. The chapter on Time as the Fourth Dimension is a must-read for anyone interested in the genre.

Movies

• Back to the Future (1985)
  • Back to the Future Part II (1989)
  • Back to the Future Part III (1990)
• Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)
  • Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (1991)
• Groundhog Day (1993) — a trope namer
• The Final Countdown (1980)
• The Philadelphia Experiment (1984)
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1987)
• Star Trek: Generations (1994)
• Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
• The Terminator (1984)
  • Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
  • Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
  • Terminator Salvation (2009)
• The Time Machine (1960)
• Timecop (1994) — Evil politician versus Time Police. Useful take on ways a villain would use time travel.
• The Butterfly Effect (2004) — Guy uses mental time travel to try to fix the mistakes of his childhood. Almost every attempt makes things much, much worse.
• Twelve Monkeys (1995) — Classic movie about how you can't change fate.

TV Series

• Back to the Future (animated) — A Saturday morning spin-off from the movie series. Not too bad.
• Doctor Who — Do I have to explain?
• "Peabody's Improbable History" — the classic take on fractured history from Rocky and Bullwinkle. Set the WAYBAC, Sherman!
• Quantum Leap — A time traveler takes the place of people in the past where he must try to "set right what once went wrong" in order to go on. Difficult to pull off with a group of PCs, but a possible source of ideas.
• Seven Days — A secret government project can send an agent back in time to try to prevent catastrophes, but he can only go back seven days.
• Star Trek — Although the focus was primarily on Space Exploration, all of the various incarnations of Star Trek have featured Time Travel episodes. Some notable ones include:
  • "The City on the Edge of Forever" (TOS)
  • "Tomorrow is Yesterday" (TOS)
  • "Time's Arrow" (ST:TNG)
  • "Trials and Tribblations" (DS9)
  • And the whole Suliban story arc from Star Trek: Enterprise
• The Time Tunnel An experimental time machine goes wrong and now two travelers are lost in time while a team of scientists in the present observe and try to get them back.
• The Twilight Zone — Not primarily about Time Travel, but having some notable Time Travel episodes.
• Voyagers! — Time-hopping troubleshooters give history a nudge when it goes off track. The red light on the Omni means something's wrong.

Anime

• Inuyasha
• Fire Tripper

Comics

• Time Masters (DC)

RPGs

• Continuum
• GURPS Time Travel — A supplement for GURPS 3e discussing many aspects of using time travel in a RPG as well as a number of settings using time travel and/or alternate universes.
• GUPRS Time Travel Adventures — Contains three adventures based on settings from GURPS Time Travel.
• GURPS Infinite Worlds — The emphasis is on alternate universes, in particular the GURPS "Infinite Worlds" setting, but this book also contains much of the material from GURPS Time Travel updated to GUPRS 4e

Video Games

• Time Hollow (2008; Nintendo DS) — After having his parents erased on him overnight, Ethan Kairos discovers he can manipulate the past. Initially a simple enough story about investigating what happened to him while making varyingly succesful attempts to avert the tragedies that come his way, the plot thickens considerably when it becomes clear that someone has been using similar powers against him and is getting increasingly agressive. Next to no gameplay, but a highly gripping story among the best.
• Chrono Trigger (1995; SNES, DS)
• Shadow of Destiny (2001; PS2, PC, Xbox, PSP) — A man gets the opportunity to travel through time to investigate and prevent his own murder.