My love for time travel fiction started long ago. The first novel I remember reading in this clouded sub-genre was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.
I was twelve and was astounded by the idea of shifting through time and dimensions. I followed that with Well’s The Time Machine and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, discovering the many different avenues that time travel could take.
From machines to genetics, there are many ways to achieve time travel, but my favorite is accidental, whereby the hero/heroine is thrown back in time by some earthly or magical force. Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander is an incomparable example. 
Literary time travel is a way to explore history in a more urgent way. It adds mystery and depth, and it forces the protagonist to admit that there are unseen forces in the world.
Says Hamlet, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’
What was your first time travel read? Let me know. And please help by subscribing!
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I wish I new the language that was on this post. 🙂 My first time travel book was the Choose Your Own Adventure. Of course, I got to choose my time travel, but it was such fun! I’d finish one adventure and then go back and do the other ones in the book–to see the outcome!
Those books are great! Such a cool idea for kidlit.
A Wrinkle in Time went through a lot of rejections before it found a publisher. Those companies that rejected it regretted it, I’m sure.
The same thing happened with the Harry Potter series.
I remember A Wrinkle in Time!!! But I have read very few “time travel” books per se–I suspect that Gabaldon’s series made the whole genre more popular. To me, the whole reading experience is like a travel of sorts–whether a “time travel” to other periods of history, or travel geographically, or even, with Isaac Asimov, deep into the human body. Time travel done well is wonderful, but then, historical fiction done well serves a similar purpose. I’m going to look up that Fever book you reviewed!
Well said, Lynne! All reading experiences are an adventure to a different time or new world.