Time Travel Fiction: Books, Paradoxes, Science and Stories

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Time Travel Fiction

A reader’s route through time machines, branching histories, causal loops and the inconvenient possibility that changing the past may change the person doing it.

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Time travel stories work because the machinery is never really the point. They are about regret, identity, power and the terrible temptation to revise what made us.

Books and filmsReviews and analysis of the genre’s cleverest journeys through time.
Science and paradoxSeparate real physics from useful fictional machinery.
Original fictionMeet broken timelines, missing records and catastrophically unhelpful guidance.

Latest and essential reading

These articles move from the science of time travel to its ethics, classics and stranger modern forms.

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The Time Traveller’s User Guide

Dark comedy, fractured timelines and catastrophic choices in a universe where the user guide may be rewriting the user.

Start with the free 1950s reading guide

Twelve landmark books, three routes into the decade and five discussion questions—delivered after you confirm your email address.

Get the free guide