Time travel sci-fi: 9 award-recognized books
Time travel stories are about cause and consequence, and about what we would change if we could. These award-recognized books range from comic adventures in Victorian England to a love story fought across a time war.
If you read just one: This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone, because it is short, beautiful and like nothing else in the genre.
Historians in the past
1. Doomsday Book
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards; finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award (1993) ·
An Oxford historian is sent to the Middle Ages, while a mysterious illness spreads at home.
Good to know: Slow first half, devastating second.
2. To Say Nothing of the Dog
Won the Hugo and Locus Awards; finalist for the Nebula Award (1999) ·
A time-lagged historian in Victorian England chases a missing artifact. A comedy of manners with time travel.
3. Blackout/All Clear
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (2011) ·
Historians stranded in Britain during the Second World War fear they may have changed history.
Good to know: Published as two volumes, Blackout and All Clear, that tell one story.
Paradoxes and messages
4. This Is How You Lose the Time War
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (2020) ·
Rival agents in a war across time begin a correspondence that becomes a love story.
5. Timescape
Won the Nebula Award; finalist for the Locus Award (1981) ·
Scientists in 1998 try to send a warning to physicists in 1962.
6. The Man Who Folded Himself
Finalist for the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (1974) ·
A young man inherits a time belt and meets many versions of himself. The classic paradox novel, and short.
7. The Time Ships
Finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo and Locus Awards (1996) ·
An authorized sequel to H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine that goes much further into time.
Time out of step
8. The Forever War
Won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards (1976) ·
Relativity means every return from the front lands the soldier centuries further into the future.
9. Spin
Won the Hugo Award; finalist for the Locus Award (2006) ·
Earth is sealed off so that billions of years pass outside during one human lifetime.
How we chose
Every book in this guide won or was a finalist for at least one of the Hugo, Nebula, Locus or Arthur C. Clarke awards. Each book page lists its full award history with sources. Page counts come from English print editions and vary by edition. 9 books in all.