Sunday, 4 January 2015

Time Travel Fiction II

The previous post differentiated two kinds of time travel stories. Poul Anderson alone excels at both. I will omit titles on the ground that the page viewer already knows them or can find out or can ask.

Causality Violation
Mark Twain: a classic novel of attempted historical causality violation.
HG Wells: the classic time travel story with only a hint of "...anachronism and utter confusion..."
L Sprague de Camp: a definitive novel of deliberate historical causality violation.
Ward Moore: a definitive novel of accidental historical causality violation.
Jack Finney: nostalgic time travel in several short stories and in two long, illustrated novels presenting an unfortunately confused account of causality violation.

Circular Causality
HG Wells: understated circular causality.
Robert Heinlein: three definitive statements of circular causality in futuristic settings.
Harry Harrison: humorous historical circular causality.
Tim Powers: hard fantasy circular causality.
Richard Matheson: a romantic novel with circular causality.
Audrey Niffeneger: the same sub-genre as Matheson.

Poul Anderson
Three novels of historical circular causality.
A long series about a time travel organization preventing historical causality violations sometimes by closing causal circles.

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