The Seven Best Time Travel Books of All Time

After recently reading a time travel novel, it got me wondering what the best time travel books are. That is why we will be listing the seven best time travel books of all time. Keep reading to see what books made our list!

One of my favorite things about time travel novels is that they often go in different directions and have their own time travel rules. Nobody really knows how time travel works and we are all guessing. That is part of the fun; seeing how each author interprets it.

We have been fascinated with time travel for centuries. The first novel credited with any kind of time travel is Washington Irving’s 1819 novel Rip Van Winkle. The form of time travel is a long sleep. Charles Dickens 1843 novel A Christmas Carol is the first novel credited with traveling to the future and the past and returning to the present.

The most famous early novel to include a time machine is The Time Machine by H.G Wells, which was released in 1895. But he wasn’t the first author to use a time machine in his novel. That title goes to Spanish writer Enrique Gaspar and his novel The Time Ship which was released in 1887. His novel was lost in time and forgotten until 1999 when a Spanish science fiction club rediscovered it. 

Now, there are hundreds of time travel books and every year we get a lot more. You can see our picks of the seven best time travel books of all time below! 

The Best Time Travel Books of All Time 

• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• A Wrinkle in Time (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet, #1) by Madeleine L’Engle 
• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, #2) by Douglas Adams  
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens  
• Kindred by Octavia E. Butler  
• Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1) by Dan Simmons  
• The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

My Favorite Time Travel Books

After recently reading The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, I wanted to make a list of some of the best time travel books of all time. This is a subgenre that doesn’t get much love and I think that it deserves a lot more. These novels are complicated and yet, these authors have done an amazing job of making it simple for us to understand and follow.

I loved Hyperion by Dan Simmons and the concept of the “Time Tombs” moving back in time as the world moves forward. I can’t even imagine the complications around that plot and yet, Simmons pulls it off with ease. 

Conclusion

Novels like these make me want to sit down and read all of them one by one. These seven time travel books are amazing but they just scratch the surface of all the great time travel books out there to read. What are your favorite time travel books? Let us know in the comments below!

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