I envisage a single collection of the very few very best works of time travel fiction, which I suggest are:
The Time Machine by HG Wells;
"A Stitch In Time" by John Wyndham;
"By His Bootstraps" by Robert Heinlein;
"The Sorrow Of Odin The Goth" by Poul Anderson.
These happen to comprise two British literary works and two American genre stories.
Wells
implies but otherwise avoids the issue of causality paradoxes. The
other three works are circular causality stories although the last is
set in a causality violation scenario. The four works present a good
balance of past, present and future -
Wells: nineteenth century to 702,601 AD, then the furthest future of Earth, and return;
Wyndham: time travel within a character's life time;
Heinlein: twentieth century to far future;
Anderson: twentieth century to the Dark Ages.
The Time Traveler
interacts with Morlocks and Eloi. Anderson's Time Patrolman interacts
with Goths and Huns. The Time Patrol's mass produced, streamlined,
futuristic timecycles are conceptual descendants of the Time Traveller's
elaborate nineteenth century contraption. The time traveler sits on,
instead of being enclosed by, each of these vehicles. Both Wyndham and
Heinlein instead envisage a machine that sends people through time
instead of moving past- or future-wards, taking them with it.
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