Time Travel discussion
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Voting is Still Open for Our 2017 Book Club Books
Mod
Close to Destiny by Adria J. Cimino (romance, 212 pages, 2015)
To find her soul mate in the present, a young woman reaches back to a love story more than a century ago in England in this #1 Best Seller in Time Travel Romance and Magical Realism.
Kat has been too busy fighting the demons of her past to focus on love. But when she meets an intriguing new man, Will, in London her world is turned upside down. She feels she's seen him before, but knows she hasn't. Or has she?
An enigmatic woman named Destiny, saying she has a secret to share, whisks Kat and Will off to midnight parties where champagne flows freely and nothing is what it seems. And then there are those dreams that unfold in an elegant 19th century English castle…
Torn between fear of the unknown and fascination at what might happen between her and Will, Kat must decide: Should she run away, or should she seize this opportunity to change her life and find true love?
8.
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson (unconventional time travel series, 458 pages, 2006)
Awards & Nominations: Hugo Award for Best Novel (2006), Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis for Foreign Novel (2007), Seiun Award for Best Foreign Novel (2009), John W. Campbell Memorial Award Nominee for Best Science Fiction Novel (2006), Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire for Roman étranger (2008), SF ga Yomitai for Best Translated SF of the Year in Japan (2008)
Spin is Robert Charles Wilson's Hugo Award-winning masterpiece―a stunning combination of a galactic "what if" and a small-scale, very human story.
One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.
The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless disk―a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world's artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they'd been in space far longer than their known lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, a space probe reveals a bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier than inside―more than a hundred million years per year on Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only about forty years in our future.
Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to working against this slow-moving apocalypse. Diane throws herself into hedonism, marrying a sinister cult leader who's forged a new religion out of the fears of the masses.
Earth sends terraforming machines to Mars to let the onrush of time do its work, turning the planet green. Next they send humans…and immediately get back an emissary with thousands of years of stories to tell about the settling of Mars. Then Earth's probes reveal that an identical barrier has appeared around Mars. Jason, desperate, seeds near space with self-replicating machines that will scatter copies of themselves outward from the sun―and report back on what they find.
Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.
9.
Passenger by Alexandra Bracken (YA romance series, 496 pages, 2016)
Passage, n.
i. A brief section of music composed of a series of notes and flourishes.
ii. A journey by water; a voyage.
iii. The transition from one place to another, across space and time.
In one devastating night, violin prodigy Etta Spencer loses everything she knows and loves. Thrust into an unfamiliar world by a stranger with a dangerous agenda, Etta is certain of only one thing: she has traveled not just miles but years from home. And she’s inherited a legacy she knows nothing about from a family whose existence she’s never heard of. Until now.
Nicholas Carter is content with his life at sea, free from the Ironwoods—a powerful family in the colonies—and the servitude he’s known at their hands. But with the arrival of an unusual passenger on his ship comes the insistent pull of the past that he can’t escape and the family that won’t let him go so easily. Now the Ironwoods are searching for a stolen object of untold value, one they believe only Etta, Nicholas’ passenger, can find. In order to protect her, he must ensure she brings it back to them—whether she wants to or not.
Together, Etta and Nicholas embark on a perilous journey across centuries and continents, piecing together clues left behind by the traveler who will do anything to keep the object out of the Ironwoods’ grasp. But as they get closer to the truth of their search, and the deadly game the Ironwoods are playing, treacherous forces threaten to separate Etta not only from Nicholas but from her path home... forever.
10.
Defining Moments by Faye Hicks (266 pages, 2012)
Scientist Ellie Ward has discovered a window to the past. In fact, she discovered it at her childhood home when she was nine and she’s been using it to extract herself from bad situations ever since. Each time it's returned her to the 'defining moment' in her past - the point in time where a bad decision set her on the path to tragedy. The problem is, Ellie never knows what her defining moments were and so she never has any idea how much of her life she's going to have to repeat to avoid her latest ordeal. When Ellie’s research takes her to a remote area of northern Canada, she faces yet another crisis when her small plane crashes in the bush. Seriously injured and stranded more than 2000 miles from her portal to the past, this time Ellie has no way to ‘rewind the clock’.
11.
Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor (adventure romance series, 480 pages, 2013)
"History is just one damned thing after another."
Behind the seemingly innocuous façade of St Mary's, a different kind of historical research is taking place. They don't do 'time-travel' - they 'investigate major historical events in contemporary time'. Maintaining the appearance of harmless eccentrics is not always within their power - especially given their propensity for causing loud explosions when things get too quiet.
Meet the disaster-magnets of St Mary's Institute of Historical Research as they ricochet around History. Their aim is to observe and document - to try and find the answers to many of History's unanswered questions...and not to die in the process. But one wrong move and History will fight back - to the death. And, as they soon discover - it's not just History they're fighting.
Follow the catastrophe curve from 11th-century London to World War I, and from the Cretaceous Period to the destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria. For wherever Historians go, chaos is sure to follow in their wake....
12.
The Alexandrite: A Hollywood Time-Tavel Noir by Rick Lenz (time travel group author, 234 pages, 2016)
A time-travel noir that slips between the shimmering worlds of modern and midcentury Los Angeles.
How many lives does Jack have to blow before getting it right? And is sleeping with Marilyn Monroe worth getting murdered again?
When Jack Cade is fired from a no-pay production of Hamlet, he has no inkling his next role will be opposite Marilyn Monroe — forty years back in time, in 1956. As a down-and-out aging actor, Jack’s luck and life change when he’s anonymously sent a pawn ticket for an alexandrite ring. After his wife leaves him, a mysterious woman asks him to meet her at an old mansion deep in the San Fernando Valley. With nothing to lose, Jack decides to go. Once he steps through her door, he enters a world of beguiling physics and plain old magic to travel through time. Through a dark, glitzy whirlwind of events, Jack meets Marilyn, gets killed more than once, and emerges with the jewel that changes his destiny. He discovers the answers to all his life-and-death questions within the constantly shifting colors of the alexandrite.
(continued in next comment)
Mod
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman(military, 278 pages, 1974)
Awards: Hugo Award for Best Novel (1976), Nebula Award for Best Novel (1975), Locus Award for Best Novel (1976), Ditmar Award for Best International Long Fiction (1976)
The Earth's leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand—despite the fact that the fierce alien enemy that they would oppose is inscrutable, unconquerable, and very far away. A reluctant conscript drafted into an elite Military unit, Private William Mandella has been propelled through space and time to fight in the distant thousand-year conflict; to perform his duties without rancor and even rise up through military ranks. Pvt. Mandella is willing to do whatever it takes to survive the ordeal and return home. But "home" may be even more terrifying than battle, because, thanks to the time dilation caused by space travel, Mandella is aging months while the Earth he left behind is aging centuries.
14.
Out of the Past by Dana Roquet (romance series, time travel group author, 2012)
Torie Mills is beautiful, successful and a New York Times best-selling historical romance author. Determined to find some solace from her fast paced and demanding life, she decides to move to Mahaska County, Iowa—a mile outside of the tiny town of Fremont and into her great great-grandparent’s old homestead. Her plan is to restore the property to its 1870 glory days.
She hires handsome, renovation expert Dave Cameron to do the work and together they bring the old Victorian house back to life. When Torie moves in, she discovers that restoring the house has opened a portal into the past.
Time traveling each night to the Fremont of old, becomes her wonderful escape and her secret obsession.
When she and Dave become lovers, he gets swept into the travels as well—until they both realize, much too late, that there was evil in the past that would have been better left alone…
15.
Time Signature by Carlo Kennedy (time travel group author, 442 pages, 2014)
Chris Agnello is a struggling musician and loner college student who dreads the future, lives in the past, and longs for a mentor. When his physicist sister builds a time machine that runs on music, he tries to use it to go back to the 1980's, but instead finds himself farther back in the past than he bargained for - stuck in the 1700's - on a journey of self discovery, and running for his life. To get back to his own time, he must find a way to get from Dublin to London in time to catch his ride home... but in the meantime, he might just have found his future in the past. Sci-fi and time travel fans will love this new and unique perspective on time travel. Fans of historical fiction will love the deeply human characters, the surprising realism of their journey, and the heartwarming love story.
16.
The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett (series, 336 pages, 2012)
Awards: Goodreads Choice Award for Best Science Fiction (2012)
NORMALLY, WHEN THERE WAS NOTHING TO DO, HE LISTENED TO THE SILENCE.
The Silence was very faint here. Almost drowned out by the sounds of the mundane world. Did people in this polished building understand how noisy it was? The roar of air conditioners and computer fans, the susurration of many voices heard but not decipherable.... This was the office of the transEarth Institute, an arm of the Black Corporation. The faceless office, all plasterboard and chrome, was dominated by a huge logo, a chesspiece knight. This wasn't Joshua's world. None of it was his world. In fact, when you got right down to it, he didn't have a world; he had all of them.
ALL OF THE LONG EARTH.
The possibilites are endless. Just be careful what you wish for....)
1916: The Western Front. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong, and the wind in the leaves. Where has the mud, blood and blasted landscape of no-man's-land gone? For that matter, where has Percy gone?
2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Police officer Monica Jansson is exploring the burned-out home of a reclusive--some said mad, others allege dangerous--scientist who seems to have vanished. Sifting through the wreckage, Jansson finds a curious gadget: a box containing some rudimentary wiring, a three-way switch, and...a potato. It is the prototype of an invention that will change the way humankind views the world forever.
The first novel in an exciting new collaboration between Discworld creator Terry Pratchett and the acclaimed SF writer Stephen Baxter, The Long Earth transports readers to the ends of the earth and far beyond. All it takes is a single step....
17.
In Between Time: A Story of Time Travel to First Century Biblical Times by William Edward Hall (religious romance, 502 pages, 2014)
IBT is a love story, nestled within a Bible study, wrapped in a science fiction tale. A time traveler from the near future unintentionally causes changes to a well-known Biblical account. The scientists and engineers begin a search for the love of his life so that the restoration mission can be planned and performed. But everyone is stumped when they realize he hasn't met her yet. The unknown unknowns are plentiful. Nothing goes according to plan and there are many unintended consequences. Near future technology, rules and regulations, and an alternate timeline where everything is the same, but different, add to the complexity of the task. With one twist and turn after another, some tragic, some humorous; the two week roller coaster ride finally turns into a race against time itself. The story continues in the sequel
18.
Hitler Out Of Time: A Science Fiction Time Travel Novelby MR David Avoura King (time travel group member, 329 pages, 2015)
The Nazis invent a time machine in 1945 and send Hitler forward in time, where he is hunted by secret agent Norton Blake. But Hitler goes back in time and the Nazis win WW2, creating a nightmare world in which Norton is trapped. Can it all be put back to how things were?
What if the Nazis had invented a time machine during World War Two and Adolf Hitler had used that to travel in time to change the course of the war? But what if the time machine was not quite perfected and the unintended result was that Hitler ended up in a different time to what he expected? And what if he then managed to accomplish what he needed to do by finding a way to go back in time and change history?
And what if only two people realised what had happened and were the only ones who could stop this new alternate reality?
What-if stories always appeal to us because they allow us to explore a different world, one where things turned out differently because of a few people making different decisions. The idea of the Nazis winning World War Two and ruling the world is nothing new, and it is exciting to explore this idea, up to a certain extent, to see what would have happened. It should make us more grateful that in reality the Nazis did not win World War Two and did not create the thousand-year Reich that Hitler had wanted.
So we explore what might have been, not because we wished it had been that way (in fact we are glad it was not that way), but because we have to see both sides of the coin, as it were. To see what would have happened if the Allies had sat back and allowed Hitler to take over Europe, or if the Nazis had been just a bit more powerful and quicker to develop and implement the atomic bomb. It seems like we avoided a great disaster for the world in defeating Germany in World War Two, but that is not to say that it could not happen again.
So a what-if story can also warn us of the possibilities of such a thing happening in the future. Things might not be exactly as in this story, but the way the world is going we can only wonder as to where events are taking us. We shall to wait and see what happens, but if we look at how things might be different we can at least be prepared for a different and less-pleasant world to happen. Some people are amazed at the great evil of the Nazis; how could human beings do such depraved things? How could they murder millions of people in concentration camps or just through warfare?
Human nature has its good side and its bad side. In the right environment the bad side can easily come to dominate and make things bad for all around.
19.
Trespass: A Tale of Mystery and Suspense Across Time by Mikey Campling (mystery series, time travel group author, 268 pages, 2013)
Jake never liked urban myths. But this is not an urban myth. And it did not happen to someone else, but to him. He's set it down as best he can remember. Whether you believe it or not, is up to you.
The Darkeningstone combines gritty, edgy modern-day action with an adventure across time. Discovered over 5,000 years ago, the Darkeningstone affects everyone who finds it.
So remember this:
Somewhere, sometime, The Darkeningstone is waiting for you.
A fast-paced adventure across time, with short chapters crammed with cliff-hangers. There's vengeance here and the threat of violence. There's a plot you can get your teeth into and characters you can believe in.
Jake was too smart to believe the rumours about Scaderstone Pit, but now he's in more danger than he could ever have imagined.
In 1939, as World War II looms, the lives of two men will be changed forever.
Over 5,000 years ago, a hermit will keep the stone a secret. But someone is watching him - someone with murder in his heart.
What will you see when you look into The Darkeningstone?
If you dare.
20.
Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein (classic adventure, 589 pages, 1973)
Awards and Nominations: Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel (1974), Nebula Award Nominee for Best Novel (1973), Locus Award Nominee for Best SF Novel (1974)
The capstone and crowning achievement of Heinlein's famous Future History, Time Enough for Lovefollows Lazarus Long through a vast and magnificent timescape of centuries and worlds. Heinlein's longest and most ambitious work, it is the story of a man so in love with Life that he refused to stop living it; and so in love with Time that he became his own ancestor.
(End of nominations for vote)
Current List For Voting
1. Time Travel: A History
2. Hyperion
3. The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack
4. Flashforward
5. Flight
6. The Children of Green Knowe
7. Close to Destiny
8. Spin
9. Passenger
10. Defining Moments
11. Just One Damned Thing After Another
12. The Alexandrite: A Hollywood Time-Travel Noir
13. The Forever War
14. Out of the Past
15. Time Signature
16. The Long Earth
17. In Between Time: A Story of Time Travel to First Century Biblical Times
18. Hitler Out of Time: A Science Fiction Time Travel Novel
19. Trespass: A Tale of Mystery and Suspense Across Time
20. Time Enough For Love
Hello everyone, I'm planning to read the following books next year:Man in the Empty Suit
The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack
The Long Earth
Time Enough for Love
I have already read these and I heartily recommend all of them (not sure if it counts as a vote):
Hyperion
Spin
The Forever War
A Christmas Carol
Mod
1. Time Travel: A History
2. Hyperion
4. The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack
7. The Children of Green Knowe
8. Last Year
17. A Christmas Carol - hope to read together for 2016
24. Time Enough For Love
Mod
I'd not count them as a vote unless you plan to re-read one of them with us. As much as I love Spin (it's among my all-time favorites), I don't know if I'd actually re-read it or not. The last 3 books we chose that were re-reads, I ended up not reading at all, so I'm not confident enough to vote.
The Man in the Empty SuitLast Year
Passenger
My vote:Man in the Empty Suit
Last Year
Spin
Version Control
The Long Earth
Time Enough For Love
A Christmas Carol
Defining Moments
Here are my selections for 2017 Fred H. Holmes1. Time Travel: A History
3. Man in the Empty Suit
6. Flight
8. Last Year
19. Time Signature
22. Hitler Out of Time: A Science Fiction Time Travel Novel
reply | flag *
I've been a terrible group reader, but intend to better my participation:lurk ratio. My votes:Flight
Spin
Defining Moments
I've read Just One Damned Thing After Another. It's very good, quick witted and funny.
My vote:Just One Damned Thing After Another
Christmas Carol
The Alexandrite: a Hollywood Time Travel
Flashforward
Man in the Empty SuitLast Year
Spin
Version Control
My vote would be for:Time Travel: A History
Man in the Empty Suit
The Long Earth
In Between Time: A Story of Time Travel to First Century Biblical Times
My votes are for5. Flashforward
8. Last Year
10. Spin
16. The Forever War
20. The long Earth
My vote:5. Flashforward
12. Defining Moments
13. Version Control
22. Hitler Out of Time: A Science Fiction Time Travel Novel
Man in the Empty SuitHyperion
Defining Moments
3. Man in the Empty Suit5. Flashforward
6. Flight
17. A Christmas Carol
19. Time Signature
21. In Between Time: A Story of Time Travel to First Century Biblical Times
23. Trespass: A Tale of Mystery and Suspense Across Time
3. Man in the Empty SuitI've read a handful on the list, some of them I'll be sure to come back to the discussion if they win. Definitely for Version Control.
P.S. Nancy actually did remind me to come vote, lol! After they are selected, I'll have to add the books to my calendar so I won't have any excuses re; forgetting.
Hyperon , Version control , The forever war - Book I want to read and happily to get my timing right to read together . The long earth and Time travel, history books I read this year but I could probably read again, especially the second one.
1. Version Control, because Gertie wants it. 'Nuff said.2. Time Enough for Love, because I read this as a teenager, know how good it was then, and want to reread it as an adult.
3. A Christmas Carol, because I have seen every version of the film and am ashamed that I never read the book.
4. Hyperion, because I just finished it and am lazy, but can attest to it being not only an awesome book but beautifully written.
Mod
2. The Man in the Empty Suit
3. Last Year
4. Flashforward
5. Just One Damned Thing After Another
6. The Long Earth
7. Passenger
My library owns those books so I will have no problem accessing them. I put them in order based on my interest level.
W. wrote: "1. Version Control, because Gertie wants it. 'Nuff said.2. Time Enough for Love, because I read this as a teenager, know how good it was then, and want to reread it as an adult.
3. A Christmas Car..."
Yay! I'm curious about Time Enough... I might join in on that one if timing allows.
I've read Hyperion too, but I remember so little. I didn't even remember there is a time travel element!
There are a few others I'd be willing to try, but these are my votes:7. The Children of Green Knowe (avl at openlibrary.org)
8. Last Year (new, but one of my libraries has a copy which is checked out)
10. Spin (widely avl)
16. The Forever War (widely avl)
I would vote for Defining Moments if I knew that the author would offer it cheap or free to us....
Cheryl wrote: "I would vote for Defining Moments if I knew that the author would offer it cheap or free to us.... ..."It's only 99 cents...? Oh, you must mean paperback!
I'd love to discuss that one with someone, one of these days one of my GR friends will read it too. :-)
Hi Gertie, I guess I didn't research it. Yes, 99 cents is totally cheap enough! (And yes, though I'm more comfortable with paper, I'd be willing to read this as an ebook.)Amy, yes, please add Defining Moments to my votes!
Woo! Look me up if you ever read it (in case we don't read it for the group, since it's not terribly likely). It made me intrigued and frustrated and certainly made me think. Then again... that's time travel for ya', lol!
My vote in orderFlash Forward
Man in the Empty Suit
Time Travel a history
Last Year
Spin
I don't remember looking up Defining Moments when making my choices.I would read this too if it won. Add this to my vote. I will update my other post to include it as well.
Mod
Man in Empty Suit - 13
Last Year - 9
Version Control - 8
Flashforward - 7
Spin - 7
Christmas Carol - 7
Long Earth - 7
Time Travel - 6
Hyperion - 6
Time Enough for Love - 6
Flight - 5
Defining Moments - 5
Forever War - 4
Spring Heeled Jack - 2
Green Knowe - 2
Passenger - 2
One Damned Thing - 2
Time Signature - 2
In Between Time - 2
Hitler - 2
Alexandrite - 1
Trespass - 1
Close to Destiny - 0
Out of the Past - 0
Is anyone game to go ahead with A Christmas Carol this December (2016) with me? It's just over 100 pages. Maybe I'm a little biased since I'm already reading it.
Apparently I "bought" the free kindle version of A Christmas Carol in November 2013. I'll read it with you. I have seen the play performed several times at Ford's Theatre then we moved and I am feeling sentimental.
That's a lot to keep track of!I was looking to see how Version Control was doing but it isn't on the list...
Mod
I was looking to see how Version Control was doing but it isn't on the list..."
Oops. Sorry about that. It has 8 votes.
Mod
This is just like when I bet on the dogs. My choices being there or there'bouts, but not winning anything....Come on Hyperion and Spin!
Christmas Carol is on my list, but I wouldn't be able to read it now unfortunately, even if it is only short.
1. Hyperion2. Last Year
3. Spin
4. Version Control
5. Just One Damned Thing After Another
6. The Forever War
7. The Long Earth
Mod
So far, Man in the Empty Suit looks like it's the strongest contender for January.
I can read Christmas Carol again, any time.
Mod
Hi. I've been lurking here for awhile but this year I am determined to read more books and participate in discussions. I'd like to read3. Man in the Empty Suit
8. Last Year
12. Defining Moments
13. Version Control
All are new to me, and seem to have interesting premises.
Hi All :-)Hoping to be active in the group in 2017.
my votes are for -
1.Time Travel: A History by James Gleick
3. Man in the Empty Suit by Sean Ferrell
8. Last Year by Robert Charles Wilson
10. Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
21. Hitler Out Of Time: A Science Fiction Time Travel Novelby MR David Avoura King
:)
Time Travel: A HistoryHyperion
Man in the Empty Suit
Spin
Passenger
My vote:1. Time Travel: A History
3. Man in the Empty Suit
4. The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack
9. Close to Destiny
14. Just One Damned Thing After Another
15. The Alexandrite
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Time Travel
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Spin (other topics)
Spin (other topics)
Spin (other topics)
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Dexter Palmer (other topics)Robert Charles Wilson (other topics)
Robert Charles Wilson (other topics)
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HOW TO VOTE
1. Look at the books below and choose the ones you think you will definitely read if they are a Time Travel Book Club book selection. Please keep in mind how many books you think you will truly read with us in a year and only vote for the ones you’re willing to buy or borrow from the library, read, and discuss with us.
2. In the comments section, write the names of the books you would like to read. You can copy and paste the list at the bottom of comment #3 and then subtract the ones you don't want to read in order to make voting easier. There is no limit to the number of books that you can choose, but please be honest with yourself and us.
NOTES:Nominations are now closed, so you cannot add another book (new nominations will be accepted in a new post around October or November). Authors are welcome to vote for their own books, but please don’t get outside friends (or make up fake friends) to vote for your book. If we suspect that you have done this, your book will be automatically disqualified from this and future votes.
TIMELINE
*December 13: Start Reading Bonus Book--
*January 1-February 28: Reading
*March 1-April 30: Reading
*May 15-July 14: Reading
NOMINATIONS TO CHOOSE FROM
1.
(non-fiction, time travel group author, 336 pages, 2016)
Awards: Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Science & Technology (2016)
From the acclaimed author of The Information and Chaos, here is a mind-bending exploration of time travel: its subversive origins, its evolution in literature and science, and its influence on our understanding of time itself.
The story begins at the turn of the previous century, with the young H. G. Wells writing and rewriting the fantastic tale that became his first book and an international sensation: The Time Machine. It was an era when a host of forces was converging to transmute the human understanding of time, some philosophical and some technological: the electric telegraph, the steam railroad, the discovery of buried civilizations, and the perfection of clocks. James Gleick tracks the evolution of time travel as an idea that becomes part of contemporary culture—from Marcel Proust to Doctor Who, from Jorge Luis Borges to Woody Allen. He investigates the inevitable looping paradoxes and examines the porous boundary between pulp fiction and modern physics. Finally, he delves into a temporal shift that is unsettling our own moment: the instantaneous wired world, with its all-consuming present and vanishing future.
2.
(space opera series, 482 pages, 1990)
Awards & nominations: Hugo Award for Best Novel (1990), Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1990), Arthur C. Clarke Award Nominee (1992), British Science Fiction Association Award Nominee for Best Novel (1992), Ignotus for Novela (1991), Tähtivaeltaja Award (1998), Seiun Award Winner for Best Foreign Novel (1995), Chesley Award Nominee for Hardback cover (2013), SF Chronicle Award Nominee for Best Novel (1990)
On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all. On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope—and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands.
A stunning tour de force filled with transcendent awe and wonder, Hyperion is a masterwork of science fiction that resonates with excitement and invention, the first volume in a remarkable new science fiction epic by the multiple-award-winning author of The Hollow Man.
3.
(steampunk series, 510 pages, 2010)
Awards: Philip K Dick Award 2010
London, 1861.
Sir Richard Francis Burton—explorer, linguist, scholar, and swordsman; his reputation tarnished; his career in tatters; his former partner missing and probably dead.
Algernon Charles Swinburne—unsuccessful poet and follower of de Sade; for whom pain is pleasure, and brandy is ruin!
They stand at a crossroads in their lives and are caught in the epicenter of an empire torn by conflicting forces: Engineers transform the landscape with bigger, faster, noisier, and dirtier technological wonders; Eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labor; Libertines oppose repressive laws and demand a society based on beauty and creativity; while the Rakes push the boundaries of human behavior to the limits with magic, drugs, and anarchy. The two men are sucked into the perilous depths of this moral and ethical vacuum when Lord Palmerston commissions Burton to investigate assaults on young women committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack, and to find out why werewolves are terrorizing London's East End.
Their investigations lead them to one of the defining events of the age, and the terrifying possibility that the world they inhabit shouldn't exist at all!
4.
(made into a television show, 220 pages, 2000)
Awards: Prix Aurora Award for Best Long Work in English (1999)
FLASHFORWARD
Two minutes and seventeen seconds that changed the world
Suddenly, without warning, all seven billion people on Earth black out for more than two minutes. Millions die as planes fall from the sky, people tumble down staircases, and cars plow into each other.
But that’s the least of the survivors’ challenges. During the blackout, everyone experienced a glimpse of what his or her future holds—and the interlocking mosaic of these visions threatens to unravel the present.
5.
(YA historical fiction, 181 pages, 2007)
Sherman Alexie is one of our most gifted and accomplished storytellers and a treasured writer of huge national stature. His first novel in ten years is the hilarious and tragic portrait of an orphaned Indian boy who travels back and forth through time in a charged search for his true identity. With powerful and swift, prose, Flight follows this troubled foster teenager--a boy who is not a "legal" Indian because he was never claimed by his father--as he learns that violence is not the answer.
The journey for Flight's young hero begins as he's about to commit a massive act o violence. At the moment of decision, he finds himself shot back through time to resurface in the body of an FBI agent during the civil rights era, where he sees why "Hell is Re driver, Idaho, in the 1970s." Red River is only the first stop in an eye-opening trip through moments in American history. He will continue traveling back to inhabit the body of an Indian child during the battle at Little Bighorn and then ride with an Indian tracker in the nineteenth century before materializing as an airline pilot jetting through the skies today. During these furious travels through time, his refrain grows: "Who's to judge?" and "I don't understand humans." When finally, blessedly, our young warrior comes to rest again in his own life, he is mightily transformed by all he has seen.
This is Sherman Alexie at his most brilliant--making us laugh while he's breaking our hearts. Time Out has said that "Alexie, like his characters, is on a modern-day vision quest," and in Flight he seeks nothing less than an understanding of why human beings hate. Flight is irrepressible, fearless, and groundbreaking Alexie.
6.
(childrens classics, 192 pages, 1954)
Awards: Book Sense Book of the Year Award for Rediscovery (2003), Lewis Carroll Shelf Award (1969)
"Tolly" Toseland 7 is rowed up to great-gran Linnet Oldknow by servant Boggis - there has always been a Boggis at Green Knowe. The real "castle" is over 900 years old. Gran tells old family stories, and songs. Over the generations there have been many who can see, hear, and feel the ghosts, evoked by white-on-black illustrations. Toby 14, Alexander, and Linnet 6 linger after the Plague, as does the cursed topiary Green Noah.
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