Some writers gift you with clever puzzles, and then there are writers like Dete Meserve, who manage to slip a key into your hand and whisper, “Here, open the door and see what you find.”.
Meserve is best known for novels like Good Sam and The Memory Collectors, stories that don’t just move forward but shimmer sideways into questions about how we hold onto meaning, memory, and, yes, time itself. So when she offers a reading list on time travel, it’s not just “Hey, here are four cool books.”.
It’s more like she’s curating a little museum of human obsession, a set of narratives where bending time is a stand-in for bending fate. And honestly, if you’re going to trust someone with your temporal itinerary, it might as well be a novelist who’s spent her career dissecting how fragile and magical our lived moments really are.
Why does time travel never get old (pardon the pun)? Because deep down we’re all ridiculous creatures who can’t stop playing tug-of-war with the clock. We daydream about rewinding to erase that one text we shouldn’t have sent, or about fast-forwarding through the part of life where laundry multiplies faster than rabbits.
Time travel stories are permission slips for those fantasies, but with more drama and fewer detergent stains. Meserve’s chosen four are a perfect sampling platter: the grandfather of the genre, a swoony romance, a door-stopper thriller, and a Crichtonian rollercoaster. Together, they prove that whether you’re running from Morlocks or running toward love, the real journey is always about what it costs us to want more time.
1. The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
H.G. Wells is basically the person who showed up at the science-fiction party with a brand-new gadget and announced, “Look, it’s called time travel, and we’re all going to argue about paradoxes for the next 130 years.”.
The premise is deliciously Victorian: a nameless inventor cobbles together a chair with levers and brass trimmings (think steampunk IKEA, but deadlier) and flings himself far into the future. Instead of jet packs and utopia, he finds the Eloi, childlike, lethargic humans who spend their days picnicking, and the Morlocks, pale industrial gremlins who live underground and treat the Eloi like livestock.
It’s unsettling, grotesque, and, in true Wells fashion, an allegory with its teeth out. The novel is short, but it cuts like a scalpel through anxieties about class, progress, and what we become when machines do all the heavy lifting.
Why does Dete Meserve recommend it:
You have to start with H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, of course, because that’s where many of our time travel conventions began. I loved the 1960 movie version with Rod Taylor. But as foundational as the story is, the book is over 130 years old and it’s time for us to expand our understanding of what time travel fiction can accomplish.
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2. Bid Time Return by Richard Matheson
Richard Matheson, usually the guy who gives you existential chills (I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man), decided in 1975 to blindside everyone with a love story so haunting it borders on obsession.
Bid Time Return, later repackaged under the sappier but more cinematic title Somewhere in Time, introduces us to Richard Collier, a playwright who falls hopelessly in love with the portrait of a stage actress from 1896. Instead of, you know, writing her fan mail across the veil of death like a normal tragic soul, he figures out a method of self-hypnosis so intense it yanks him bodily into the past.
One minute, he’s a modern man with a pen, the next he’s strolling through a grand hotel a century earlier, convinced he’s meant to rewrite destiny.
Why does Dete Meserve recommend it:
Matheson’s Bid Time Return and watched the film adaptation (Somewhere in Time) a dozen times. It’s a must because, to me, it’s of the most romantic stories ever told, using pure emotional determination rather than technology to bridge time.
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3. 11/22/63 by Stephen King
Stephen King is not exactly famous for being concise, and 11/22/63 is the ultimate proof. Clocking in at nearly 900 pages, it’s the literary equivalent of dragging a U-Haul through history.
The premise, though, is irresistible: Jake Epping, a mild-mannered high school teacher, discovers a portal in a diner pantry that leads straight to 1958. His mission, courtesy of the diner’s weary owner, is deceptively simple: stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
But the moment Jake steps into the past, it becomes clear that time itself is stubborn. It pushes back. It throws curveballs. And, in true King fashion, it laces every decision with dread. Suddenly, Jake isn’t just a teacher with a mission; he’s a trespasser in history’s garden, chased by invisible thorns.
Why does Dete Meserve recommend it:
11/22/63 by Stephen King combines thriller elements with immersive historical fiction, dropping us into the world of the early 1960s while building suspense around the Kennedy assassination.
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Subscribe to our weekly newsletter4. Timeline by Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton had a knack for making readers believe in science just long enough to scare the hell out of them. In Timeline, he trades dinosaurs for quantum mechanics, but the recipe is the same: take a cutting-edge idea, wrap it in meticulous research, then light the whole thing on fire with action.
Here, a team of archaeologists uncovers more than relics; they stumble into a corporation with the tech to actually send them back to medieval France. One moment they’re puzzling over pottery shards, the next they’re dodging swords in a castle siege, realizing that “knowing” history isn’t the same as surviving it. Crichton pulls off that magician’s trick of convincing you that quantum foam and multiverses are just as solid as the dirt under your fingernails.
Why does Dete Meserve recommend it:
Timeline by Michael Crichton is great because of its scientific grounding in multiverse theory, delivering high-stakes medieval adventure in 1357 while addressing the practical challenges modern people would face in the past, such as language barriers and the physical dangers of pre-modern life.
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Dete Meserve’s recommendations aren’t just a book list; they’re a time capsule of the many moods of time travel fiction.
Wells shows us the bleak future that mirrors our present anxieties, Matheson wraps longing around the impossible, King drags us into the messy corridors of history, and Crichton hurls us into medieval chaos with barely a helmet. Together, they prove that time travel is never just about levers or wormholes, it’s about what we fear, what we crave, and what we’re foolish enough to hope for.
Meserve, with her own work exploring memory and meaning, knows exactly why these stories endure, because every reader, sooner or later, whispers to themselves the same forbidden question: “What if I could go back?”. And if you dare to ask, these four novels are the perfect places to start looking for your answer.
