The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

Anyone familiar with this blog knows that I'm a huge fan of books dealing with time travel. Over the past few years I've written more than two dozen blog posts covering the subject with the actual number of time travel books read totaling more than that.

It was only natural that upon learning of The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley I'd download the book and put it into the queue.

I've mixed thoughts on the novel. Overall, the book has great potential, but I'm sorry to say that Ms. Bradley doesn't live up to the challenge.

Sadly, the book seems uneven. At certain points, the book hits home only to turn unexpectedly bland.

To make things worse, the book suffers from a bit of "wokeness". The folks from the past tend to be very often "politically incorrect" which doesn't sit well with the folks in the present. With the writer being a millennial, the wokeness isn't surprising.

In an online interview, the author describes the novel as a time travel/romance. I didn't particularly care for the romance.

The book isn't a total flop, but I don't really recommend it.

Past Master by R.A.Lafferty

 

Being forever on the lookout for reading material, when a friend told me of his recent discovery of Sci-fi writer R. A. Lafferty, I immediately did a web search for the writer. After compiling a list of his Sci-fi books found at wikipedia, I went to my go-to page for free ebooks and downloaded 20 novels and short-story collections. The question now was, where do I begin? His first novel, Past Master was nominated for the 1968 Nebula Award and the 1969 Hugo Award, so that seemed as good a place as any as a place to start.

The story is set in the year 2535 on the utopian Earth colony, Astrobe. The leaders of Astrobe view life on the planet as less than perfect, and to bring their world in line with their utopian dreams, they send a man to Earth to travel back in time and bring Saint Thomas More into the future to rule over Astrobe. The leaders do this on the mistaken belief that More's book, Utopia was not satire, but a "how-to" manual.

Once on the planet, Thomas More travels about the world and experiences adventures of a very unusual nature. I would describe his wanderings as Don Quixote or Candide in Outer Space - with a bit of sixties psychedelia thrown in for good measure.

There were times when I found it difficult to keep up, but my review is positive, for the most part.

After reading Past Master, I downloaded a recent translation of More's Utopia, which will be the next book on my list.

Replay by Kim Grimwood

 

One of my sources for book recommendations is the daily podcast at Commentary.org. The podcast is predominantly political, from a conservative point of view although at the end of most podcasts there will be a Commentary Recommends section which will recommend not only books, but movies, and T.V. programs......sometimes even Youtube videos.

So far this year I've read five books recommended by the podcast. In February there were two - The Wolf Hunt by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen and Budapest Noir by Kondor Vilmos. In March I read The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin and A Brutal Design by Zachary Solomon. I didn't particularly like The Three-Body Problem, but that's neither here nor there.

Number five is a fantasy novel from 1986 - Replay by Ken Grimwood. The novel tells of a 43 year old man who suddenly dies of a heart attack and awakens in his 18 year old body in his dorm room at Emory University in Atlanta in the year 1963. He begins to relive his life with the memories of his earlier life intact. With his knowledge of "the future" he is able to amass a vast fortune thru gambling on sporting events and surefire stock investments. He lives his "replay" slightly different from the first life, but still dies of a heart attack on the same date.

He finds himself returned to 1963, Emory University but at a slightly later date. This cycle continues for several "replays". Always dying on the same date but awakening at later time than the previous replay.

The novel was a bestseller in Japan. Its time-loop concept has been referenced as a precursor of the 1993 movie, Groundhog Day.

As usual, I won't be giving spoilers.

Sadly, Grimwood died of a heart attack in 2003 at age 59 while working on a sequel to Replay. I've only been able to find one other book by Grimwood - Elise. I wish there were more.

Before Your Memory Fades

 

In August of this year, I discovered the novels of Japanese writer, Toshikazu Kawaguchi . At that time, he had published two novels - Before the Coffee Gets Cold and a sequel, Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Café. Both tell of a café in Tokyo that allows its customers to travel back in time.

As I mentioned in the blog post linked to above, a third book in the series, Before Your Memory Fades was scheduled for release in November. Naturally, I had to get my hands on a copy of the ebook.

The wikipedia summary of the first novel describes all three novels in the series rather well:

In a narrow back alley in Tokyo lies a café called Funiculi Funicula. In the café, customers have the opportunity to travel back to a time of their choosing, as long as they follow a long list of rules. There is only one seat in the café that allows time travel; the seat is only available when the ghost that usually occupies it goes for a toilet break; once back in time, customers can't leave the seat; the only people in the past who can be met are people who have visited the café; whatever happens in the past, the present won't change; and, most importantly, the customer has to return to the present before their cup of coffee goes cold.

The main difference in the third novel is that the stories take place in a different café (Donna Donna) in Hakodate rather than Tokyo. The same family is charge of pouring the coffee that permits the time travel.

I enjoyed reading all three books in the series, and recommend the trilogy - however, I'm looking forward to the day when Kawaguchi spreads out and writes a novel that is not part of the same series.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold - Toshikazu Kawaguchi

A few months ago, when I was reading a wide selection of novels dealing with Time Travel, I was unaware of Toshikazu Kawaguchi and his two time travel books - Before the Coffee Gets Cold and Tales From The Cafe (Before The Coffee Gets Cold Book 2) . Had I been familiar with these two back then, the two would have certainly made my list......perhaps even my my top ten.

The summary from the wikipedia page for the first novel does a very good job describing that novel -

In a narrow back alley in Tokyo lies a café called Funiculi Funicula. In the café, customers have the opportunity to travel back to a time of their choosing, as long as they follow a long list of rules. There is only one seat in the café that allows time travel; the seat is only available when the ghost that usually occupies it goes for a toilet break; once back in time, customers can't leave the seat; the only people in the past who can be met are people who have visited the café; whatever happens in the past, the present won't change; and, most importantly, the customer has to return to the present before their cup of coffee goes cold.
The novel follows the stories of the café staff, notably barista Kazu, and four different customers. The first, a businesswoman named Fumiko, tries to repair her relationship with her boyfriend after he left the country for a job in the United States. The second, a nurse named Kohtake, tries to find a letter her Alzheimer-stricken husband wrote. The third, a bar owner named Hirai, tries to talk to her sister whom she's been avoiding. The fourth, one of the café co-owners named Kei, tries to go to the future to talk to her unborn daughter.

Upon reading the first in the series, I immediately began reading the second book. A third book in the series, Before Your Memory Fades , is due for release in November, 2022.

In 2018, the novel was adapted to film as Kōhī ga samenai uchi ni (title translated to Cafe Funiculi Funicula ). I found the film on a Russian website - ok.ru - fortunately, with English subtitles. Watching it is definitely on my to do list.

The March Reading List

April has arrived, and with it comes the list of books I read in March.

March is, of course 3 days longer than a normal February so naturally the list for March will include more books than the previous month.

Like February, the books I read In March were exclusively Sci-Fi Time Travel novels. Honestly, some were much better than others. Not only will this post contain the list of books read in March, but I'll also give my picks for the top five time travel books (read since my quest began in February).

First, the Top Five:
1) the "Oxford Time Travel series" by Connie Willis. This is actually a four book series, but for the purposes of my "top five" list, I'm counting the series as one book.
2) The Time Traveler's Wife   by Audrey Niffenegger.
3) Kindred   by Octavia Butler.
4) Slaughterhouse-Five    by Kurt Vonnegut.
5) The Time Machine   by H.G. Wells and it's sequel The Time Ships   by Stephen Baxter. Although these are two different books by two different writers, again for the purposes of my list, I'm counting these as one book.

Although some others were less than my favorite, there are two that deserve to be mentioned as the worst. The Thief of Time  by Terry Pratchett (which I couldn't bring myself to finish) and Time Enough For Love  by Robert Heinlein.

This month I'll be reading non- time travel books written by some of the writers in my time travel list. I've already put eight books in the queue. These will include books by Octavia Butler, Connie Willis, H.G. Wells and Stephen Baxter. More on that later.

So, here's the list for March.

The Time Traveler's Wife   by Audrey Niffenegger.
Tourmalin's Time Cheques  by F. Anstey.
The Langoliers  by Stephen King.
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August  by Claire North.
The End of Eternity  by Isaac Asimov.
The Chronoliths  by Robert Charles Wilson.
The Accidental Time Machine   by Joe Haldeman.
Tau Zero   by Poul Anderson.
Slaughterhouse-Five   by Kurt Vonnegut.
Kindred   by Octavia Butler.
All You Need Is Kill    by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.
The Masks of Time   by Robert Silverberg.

The Final Two Time Travel Books

 

Not long after I had finished reading Kindred by Octavia Butler, I decided that I had become nearly burned out on time travel novels and I would go on to some other genre when April arrived. When I made that decision, there was still enough time left in March to read two final time travel books. The two would be All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka and Robert Silverberg's The Masks of Time .

Sakurazaka's book had been listed on the 23 Best Time Travel Science Fiction Books. Silverberg's book was not.

I had managed to read 21 time travel books since the first of February. Many of the books chosen had come from the above linked to list. Six of the books were not on the list.

All You Need Is Kill is pretty much a standard Sci-Fi novel. Aliens invading the Earth - a united Earth fighting the aliens. The "time travel" in the book is actually a "time-loop". Does that count? Lots of killing and violence, but few surprises. I enjoyed the book, but I don't think it qualifies as one of the 23 Best Time Travel Science Fiction Books. The Masks of Time does, on the other hand.

I first read Silverberg's book more than 40 years ago. I can't get more specific than that. Even after all that time, I could remember more than I thought possible. The time traveler, Vornan-19 arrives in Rome, Italy on Christmas Day, 1998 to much fanfare. He soon becomes a world wide celebrity. As the world of 1998 is looking with dread upon the up coming millennium, many see the time traveler as a sign of hope.....a sign that the world continues beyond the year 2000 AD.

The book was written in 1968 - a long way from the craziness of Y2K. Of course, Silverberg did not predict the insanity of the Y2K scare, but I was reminded of that time with Silverberg's description of the apocalyptic cult of 1998.

Like many Sci-Fi writers of the mid to late 1960's, Silverberg was expecting that we'd have colonized the Moon by the end of the century. He foresaw the prevalence of computers in our time, although he expected the computers to be like the 1960 era computers - giant sized.

Unlike several of the time travel books I'd read during the past 2 months, The Masks of Time fits within the genre. Of the 21 time travel books, this one may not make the top five, but it does belong in the top ten.

Kindred

As I went deeper into my quest to read exclusively time travel novels for the next few months, I became somewhat weary of what I had gotten myself into. I've read 19 time travel novels since the first of February, and frankly not all of these have been winners. I was becoming more and more burned-out on the genre and was longing for something different.

Not at all certain that I would go into April still willing to continue the quest, I looked at the books I wanted to read before I stopped reading time travel books all together. One such novel was Octavia Butler's Kindred . I had looked into the work and was looking forward to reading this one - I've also downloaded everything written by Butler, to be read in the not too distant future.

The novel incorporates time travel and what is known as Neo-slave narratives. It is a novel that should be read - although it certainly isn't comfortable reading.

The methods writers have used to transport people through time fall into two basic categories. One method involves some sort of machine or device which transports the protagonist either forward or backward (or both) in time. Examples of this are, of course The Time Machine by H.G.Wells, it's sequel The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter, and the "Oxford Time Travel series" by Connie Willis.

The second category involves "spontaneous" time travel by individuals without the use of machines. Examples of this type include Slaughterhouse-Five ,The Time Traveler's Wife and There Will Be Time . Kindred falls into this category. Like Henry DeTamble in The Time Traveler's Wife  and Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim, Kindred's Dana Franklin has no control over when she'll time travel. But resembling Jack Havig from There Will Be Time, Dana Franklin can bring objects and/or people along with her, as Franklin and her husband discover.

There are several complex themes in the Butler novel; a realistic depiction of slavery and slave communities and the "master-slave power dynamic", a critique of the official history of the United States, and the concept of "race".

As I stated earlier, Kindred is an uncomfortable read, but it deserves to be read.

Slaughterhouse-Five

Of the books listed in the 23 Best Time Travel Science Fiction Books, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut is one of the only three books I'd read prior to coming upon the list. It's been more than 50 years since I first read the book and most of the details I remember from that early reading are probably actually memories from the 1972 film.

When I read the novel as a teenager, Vonnegut was my favorite writer - he's no longer that, but I've come upon quite a few more great writers since my teen years so that change of opinion is to be expected. Still, Slaughterhouse-Five rates very high in my view of the time travel books I've read recently.

Of the 18 time travel books I've read since the first of February, there are three which are in a very close tie for first place - To Say Nothing of The Dog ,The Time Traveler's Wife and now Slaughterhouse-Five . My only objection to Slaughterhouse-Five is Vonnegut's over-use of the phrase "So it goes" when a death is mentioned in the novel.Otherwise, it's certainly worth a read (or reread).

Tau Zero

Another Sci-Fi novel to make the list of the 23 Best Time Travel Science Fiction Books is Poul Anderson's Tau Zero . Like far too many books on the list, calling Tau Zero a time travel book is to play fast and loose with the genre.

The story follows the crew of 25 men and 25 women of the starship Leonora Christine who are on their way to colonize a planet in orbit around the star Beta Virginis, in the constellation Virgo.

The starship is not capable of faster-than-light travel, but due to relativity and time dilation, the crew expects to spend 5 years on board the starship while 33 years will pass by on Earth. However, the ship passes through a small nebula which damages the "deceleration field generators". The ship cannot slow down......it actually continues to accelerate rapidly. Because of the radiation produced by the engines, the crew cannot repair the damage. The starship is unable to stop and is doomed to travel endlessly through time and space.

The speed increases to the point that billions of years pass by on Earth. So, I suppose technically we can say the crew advances to the future, although relatively little time passes for them.

Tau Zero is classified as a "hard science fiction novel" - the plot is grounded in real physics. Not exactly my favorite type of Sci-Fi. I don't mind a bit of real science, but for that I'd rather read Simon Singh or Stephen Hawking. Too much description of the hard science takes away from the story line.

The situation looks bleak throughout 95% of the story, with a happily-ever-after ending coming in the final chapter. With Sci-Fi, you can always manage a happy ending if you want one.

The Accidental Time Machine

Unlike far too many of the books found on the list of the 23 Best Time Travel Science Fiction Books, Joe Haldeman's The Accidental Time Machine is actually about time travel.

The beginning of The Accidental Time Machine is pretty funny. I thought that if Haldeman could maintain the level of humor throughout the entire book, this one might be my favorite time travel book so far. Unfortunately, Haldeman pretty much abandons the humor and makes the book a "cautionary" tale. When the protagonist, Matt Fuller, arrives in AD 2252, he finds a theocracy controlled by "Jesus". I suppose quite a few Sci-Fi fans see Haldeman's having a scientist/atheist time traveler confront a Christian theocracy as an act of bravery on Haldeman's part. I, on the other hand, found that part of the novel a bit ho-hum. Maybe a little better than the traditional "time traveler meets world ruled by artificial intelligence", but Haldeman goes there later as well.

Sadly, The Accidental Time Machine starts with a bang and ends with a whimper.

The End of Eternity

The next work in my time travel adventures is Isaac Asimov's 1955 Sci-Fi novel, The End of Eternity . The story revolves around an organization which uses time travel for the purpose of social engineering various time periods for the betterment of humanity.

Naturally, things don't work out as planned.

I find myself judging this novel from two different criteria. First, as a Sci-Fi novel written in the 1950s, and secondly, on how well it holds up in the overall Sci-Fi world.

The book was highly acclaimed by the critics of the day. In that respect, the novel is well worth the read. It's great, by the standards of the 50s and 60s.

However, when compared to later Sci-Fi works, The End of Eternity doesn't deserve to be included in the 23 Best Time Travel Science Fiction Books. Perhaps I'm being unfair.

I thought that the time frames involved within the story to be so vast as to be approaching the realm of absurdity. The speculating on the 150,000th century was enough to make my eyes roll to the back of my head.

On the plus side, the ending came as a bit of a surprise to me and it made up for some of the negatives. It may not be my favorite time travel book of all times, it still beats out  The Thief of Time or Time Enough For Love .

Three Time Travel Novels

Although I haven't written a post since my review of The Time Traveler's Wife , I am still on my quest to read only Sci-Fi novels pertaining to time travel for the next few months. Since finishing that review, I've read Tourmalin's Time Cheques by F. Anstey,The Langoliers by Stephen King and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North.

As none of these three impressed me as much as The Time Traveler's Wife , I'm having a difficult time writting a separate post for each individual book. So, this post will feature all three in one.

Tourmalin's Time Cheques can only be loosely categorized as "time travel" (and not Sci-Fi at all). F. Anstey was best known for his humorous parodies in Punch magazine.Tourmalin's Time Cheques is basically a fantasy novel written in F. Anstey's typical humorous style. Written in 1891, the book appeals to those of us who can appreciate the humor of the Victorian era. Not everyone can. I found the ending a bit cheesy - one reviewer found the portions of the story trite. Heck, the book was written in 1891 and those portions may not have been looked on as trite 130 years ago. Overall, I enjoyed the book.

The Langoliers is one of four novellas contained in a collection by King entitled Four Past Midnight. Not Stephen King's best. OK, but no prize.

A good deal of Claire North's The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August takes place in Russia. The story doesn't follow the pattern of a typical Russian story of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky; it's more like the stories of Yevgeny Zamyatin or Mikhail Bulgakov. I certainly don't have a problem with that, although I found the story to be a little long. It could have been resolved much earlier. Although not my favorite in the time travel genre, I liked the novel well enough to download other novels by North.

The Time Traveler's Wife

At the bottom of each post, I will post labels to direct folks to other posts that fit into a similar genre - books, and time travel are two examples. There is also a Sci-Fi label, but I'm reluctant to classify Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife as Sci-Fi. Of course, it seems only natural to put any time travel novel in the Sci-Fi category, but this wonderful book is something different.

The person who assembled the 23 Best Time Travel Science Fiction Books list describes The Time Traveler's Wife as "more love story than sci-fi". That's certainly true, but I don't believe anyone should skip this book on that account.

I absolutely loved this book; I'd even go so far as to say it's the best book I've read so far this year.

Like Jack Havig in the last time travel book I read before this one (There Will Be Time ), Henry DeTamble suffers from a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel. There are differences, of course. Jack Havig is able to travel at will, Henry DeTamble has no control over his time traveling. Jack is able to carry small items along with him - clothing, money, gold in small amounts. Henry can bring nothing - not even the clothes he's wearing. Neither time traveler can bring another person with him.

The plot summary in the wikipedia article describes the story quite well:
"Using alternating first-person perspectives, the novel tells the stories of Henry DeTamble (born 1963), a librarian at the Newberry Library in Chicago, and his wife, Clare Anne Abshire (born 1971), an artist who makes paper sculptures. Henry has a rare genetic disorder, which later comes to be known as Chrono-Impairment. This disorder causes Henry to involuntarily travel through time. When 20-year-old Clare meets 28-year-old Henry at the Newberry Library in 1991 at the beginning of the novel, he has never seen her before, although she has known him most of her life".

As I mentioned in my review of There Will Be Time , the final 25% of that novel contains a story line which I found totally unnecessary. In the ebook edition of The Time Traveler's Wife , the first 25 pages of an upcoming sequel are included. Niffenegger estimated that the book "should be ready in 2018 or so". Unfortunately, it's 2022 and the sequel hasn't been released. I, for one, am looking forward to reading it.

The February Reading List

The reading list for February is made up of nine time travel Sci-fi novels. I had begun my list my starting with the so-called, 23 Best Time Travel Science Fiction Books. I quickly jumped off the list. Two books that made that list - Time Enough For Love and The Thief of Time should never made any "best" list.

I went thru the list and removed two. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe was removed because it rightly belongs to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series and should be read alongside those books.
I also culled Time and Again by Jack Finney because it's an illustrated novel and doesn't hold up well on my Kindle.

So, here are the "time travel" books I read in February.

The Anubis Gates                  Tim Powers
To Say Nothing of the Dog    Connie Willis
The Doomsday Book             Connie Willis
Blackout                                Connie Willis
All Clear                                Connie Willis
Time Enough For Love             Robert Heinlein
The Time Machine                    H.G.Wells
The Time Ships                         Stephen Baxter
There Will Be Time                   Poul Anderson

There Will Be Time

The final book in the time travel series for February is Poul Anderson's There will Be Time . This book did not make the 23 Best Time Travel Sci-fi book list that I've been using, off and on. 23 seemed like a very strange number, so I added a few to my own list. I had chosen There will Be Time because another of Anderson's time travel books did make the list - Tau Zero .

One of the more unusual twists in the novel is that the protagonist, Jack Havig is able to travel through time, not by use of a machine or device, but due to his having a genetic mutation that allows him to move through time.

As a time travel novel, the book is about average.....not especially good, nor especially bad. I'd rate it on a par with The Anubis Gates ; not the best I've ever read, although it is much better than either The Thief of Time or Time Enough For Love .

Jack Havig travels thru the past, present and future. However, after 70% of the story, he leaves Earth, never to return and the story continues with the non-time traveling Maurai Foundation. I really couldn't get into this last 30%. I found the whole Maurai Foundation story boring. I would have preferred that Anderson left the Maurai out of this novel altogether. 

My time travel series for March will begin with Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife . This story also deals with a man who travels through time due to a genetic disorder. My next post will feature the entire list for February.

The Thief of Time

Continuing along the time travel route, I've come to Terry Pratchett's The Thief of Time. As usual, I looked for a copy of the book's cover to go along with the blog post for the novel. I know that one can't always judge a book by the cover, but I should have known by this cover that this book was not for me.

I really could not get into this book. The story rambled on and on and on.....but going nowhere. It all seemed so very pointless to me. I couldn't make it through 30% of the ebook before I put it down to go on to something different. I've too many books on my list to drudge on through a book I can't enjoy.

I'm giving this one a rating of 0 out of 5 stars.....even lower than Time Enough For Love ,which I hated.

The Time Ships

Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships is a sequel to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine , officially authorized by the Wells estate to mark the centennial of the classic novel's publication. I've no information as to the how or why of their decision, but the Wells estate could not have made a better choice.

Baxter's novel is absolutely wonderful.

Baxter managed to write the novel from the prospective of a Victorian writer. I could feel Wells' spirit guiding his writing style. Baxter picked up the story where Wells stopped and he took the story to amazing heights. The novel is full of surprise twists and turns......going places where I never could have imagined.

One of the minor flaws in the original story was the lack of understanding on Wells' part of the various paradoxes brought about by time travel. Baxter takes care of that.

Of course, one of the advantages Baxter had over H.G.Wells is the advancement of scientific knowledge since the Victorian era. The Time Machine was written well before the work of Albert Einstein, and the later understanding of the science of Quantum Mechanics and String Theory.

I highly recommend that anyone thinking of reading this great Sci-fi novel read (or reread) The Time Machine before hand.

I'm giving The Time Ships a rating of 5 stars out of 5.

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

Before I write on my latest time travel read, I want to say something about the list I've been using. While I was reading The Anubis Gates I found a list of 23 time travel books. Being a contrarian by nature, I decided to start reading at #23 (To Say Nothing of The Dog ) rather than #1.

I was so impressed with To Say Nothing of The Dog that I added the three additional books in Connie Willis' Oxford time travel series to my reading list.

When I had finished the four books by Connie Willis I went back to my list. That put the next time travel book as Time Enough For Love by Robert Heinlein. The less said about that piece of #@^%, the better.

Planning for the end of the month, I looked at the next four or five books on the list. I eliminated Time and Again by Jack Finney. This one is an illustrated novel which doesn't hold up as a mobi file for my Kindle. The next four on the list are Thief of Time by Terry Pratchet,The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter, and The Time Machine by H.G.Wells.The Time Ships was authorized by the H.G. Wells estate in 1995 to mark the centenary of the original publication of The Time Machine.

I last read the H.G. Wells classic in June of 2017, and I wanted to read it again before reading the sequel. I wanted to make sure that those two made it into February, so I bumped them ahead of Thief of Time and The Time Traveler’s Wife.

The Time Machine is truly a classic Sci-fi novella. It is the sine qua non of time travel books. Wells, for what ever reason, did not speculate on the paradoxes of time travel (which is taken care of in Baxter's sequel) but the novel doesn't suffer from that omission.

Wells was a Socialist, and there's a bit of the ol' class struggle in The Time Machine. The Time Traveller stops in 802,701 A.D. and concludes, from what he discovers, that Communism has at last been achieved. Oddly enough, the future looks a bit dystopian coming from a writer who advocated Socialism. In spite of the political slant, I'm giving this book a 4.5 out of 5 stars rating.

According to wikipedia several sequels have appeared over the years. The Time Ships is the only authorized sequel, so I'm not sure if I'll be adding others to my already substantial list.

Time Enough For Love

Continuing in my quest to read only Sci-fi novels dealing with time travel for the next few months, the next one on my list, following the four novels in Connie Willis' time travel series, is Time Enough For Love by Robert Heinlein.

My rating for this book will based on 3 criteria:
1) It's value as a Sci-fi novel
2) It's worth as a Heinlein novel
3) It's ranking as a "time travel" novel

Sad to say, Time Enough For Love fails on all three counts.

Prior to this, it had been fifty years, give or take, since I last read anything by Robert Heinlein. As a teen, I had read the three novels that many consider Heinlein's best - Stranger in a Strange Land , The Moon is a Harsh Mistress , and Starship Troopers . This book nowhere approaches the level of those three. Every character - and there are many - all have the same basic personality. Although they have different bodies, different genders and appear to be different people, Heinlein didn't waste much energy on character development. All conversations between the characters sound like the same person talking to himself.
Heinlein was obsessed with sex when he wrote this novel and no sexual act appears to have been off limits for Heinlein. Not even incest.

As a Sci-fi work, the book is below par. Sure, there's space travel, talking computers and assorted advancements in science, but in many parts of the book, it felt as if I were reading a Zane Grey shoot 'em up. Covered wagons and all.

I'm not sure why this was included in the list of the 23 Best Time Travel Science Fiction Books. Time travel seems to have been an after thought with this novel.Time travel doesn't even become part of the plot until the last 25% of the book. I suspect Heinlein used time travel as a way for his main character to have sex with his mother when they were both 35 years old.

Toward the very end of the book, it looked as if the protagonist was going to be killed. I've never looked forward to any character getting killed off as much as I did Lazarus Long. But, this was time travel, so his family managed to save him. According to wikipedia, Lazarus Long makes an appearance in a number of Heinlein's books. I'll be sure to skip those.