Wanted: Time travel short story recommendations

[steuard]

I'm teaching a First Year Seminar class this fall entitled "Time Travel in Science and Literature", and I'm looking for suggestions on the "Literature" part. I honestly don't know how much reading is reasonable to assign in this context, so my main request here is for short story suggestions. (I'm also considering a couple of short-ish books:

Comments

[prock]

Allow me to suggest a "very short time travel" story ...

Do something clever with time travel "feedback", where the process of time travel is longer than the temporal distance traveled.

[jon_leonard]

My initial list includes The Time Machine, though I think you're right that it's better to refer to it than assign it as such. Pretty much all subsequent time travel stories react to it somehow. I'd also point to Bester's "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed", Heinlein's "-All You Zombies-" and "By His Bootstraps", Niven's "Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violations" (not the physics paper with the same name).

For longer form, Power's "The Anubis Gates" is one of my favorites; I'm also fond of Stross's "Palimpsest". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_travel_science_fiction#Time_travel_in_novels_and_short_stories is helpful)

In film, the original Terminator stands out.

There are really a lot of choices; are there any particular aspects of time travel stories you want to emphasize or be sure to mention?

[beth_leonard]

I remember reading "The Time Machine" for fun in a a fairly short period of time -- on my electronic device waiting in line at Costco over the course of about a month. It couldn't have taken more than a few hours altogether

[beth_leonard]

Just re-read and still love that story. If you read the comments you can find this one from the author as well, which does a pretty good job of explaining things about time travel stories I thought:

Thanks, all

[steuard]

Fun story! I think Robbbbb suggested that one, too. It would be easy to throw into the mix. :)

[ricevermicelli]

My two favorite time travel authors are Connie Willis and Kage Baker. Willis is a brilliant humanist, and her most accesible time travel novel is To Say Nothing of the Dog. Her best, IMO, are Blackout and All Clear, but two 500-page novels are much for a semester.

Kage Baker was a brilliant misanthrope. Her key work - The Company series - is probably also much to assign. Fortunately, she wrote some great short stories. Son, Observe the Time might work. Of her novels, Sky Coyote might be the best bet for discussing mechanics and implications without being confusing in a mid-series way.

[steuard]

I really enjoyed Willis's Doomsday Book, and it sounds like To Say Nothing of the Dog would be a great choice for the class (from what you and others have said). I'm still trying to figure out if I've got room for a full novel, though. Right now, I'm feeling increasingly confident that I'm going to have students but the anthology The Time Traveler's Almanac, which includes Willis's original time travel short story, "Fire Watch" (along with a bunch of the other recommendations folks have given me). Have you read that?

[robbbbbb]

My wife is totally with you on Willis. E goes back and re-reads her work regularly. It's her comfort reading. I need to pick those books up and read them sometime soon.