I’ve often wondered: if I were a writer, what would I write? The answer, I guess, is a book I’d have loved to read if someone else had written it.
For example, I’ve never read the definitive time travel novel. Every one I’ve ever read has left me just that little bit unsatisfied. So I guess that’s where I’d start.
Maybe I don’t have to.
Gentle reader, if reader there be, recommend a good time travel novel for me…
As a kid, I remember liking David Gerrold’s The Man Who Folded Himself. Seemed to me he exhausted every possible paradox in that book and came up with a few interesting kinks besides (e.g., the hero having sex with one of his earlier selves — “hey, it’s not homosexuality, it’s masturbation!” This worked for me as a kid, but squicked out a few of my teenage male friends).
I tried and didn’t like Chris Roberson’s Here, There, and Everywhere, but your mileage may vary.
Have you read any Connie Willis? To Say Nothing of the Dog and Domesday Book both involve time travel. The first is very funny, the second more serious.
Doug: Yes, read Gerrold, enjoyed it. Time travel, hermaphroditic sex and paradox…. yay! It was a good, tight package, and probably very high on my list too. Roberson I have not read.
sxK: No, no I have not. I’ll look out for them.
btw: I’m a library person. I do not, in general, buy books. This statement has probably alienated almost every writer who has just read it. There are good reasons. a) I’m a natural speed reader who can’t slow down. A book lasts very little time for a lot of money and Australian book prices are high; and b) I don’t have room for them. Having moved out of a home where our “library” contained (and still does) over 3000 books, spilling out of the shelves into stacks on the floor, it’s not an experience I want to repeat in my little cottage.
I listened to “The Time Traveler’s Wife” and really enjoyed it, but it is not sci fi, more relationship oriented than clever play with improbability.