The first book generally accredited to the time travel genre was written by none other than Charles Dickens. While he himself did not regard his 1843 book, A Christmas Carol as a book on time travel (the concept was relatively unknown), aficionados in later years declared it to be so, perhaps just to be able to get the great author on board the genre.
Though many books on time travel were written in the early and mid-20th century, the numbers started dwindling with the progress of science, as authors realised how tough it would be to foresee all problems.
Authors realised that the trick was to travel not only through “time” but also through “space”. And for that they had to read a lot of Quantum theory and brush up their “Space-time continuum” knowledge. That was a bummer as most of them became writers so they could avoid doing just these sorts of things.
The genre by itself is extremely seductive as all of us at some point or the other have thought of going back in time and undoing a remark here or a fight there or quietly killing off Hitler when he was born or the first human who got AIDS (before he or she passed it on of course).
Early writers, of course, did not give a damn about “theories” and thus H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine remains a seminal book on the subject. The story is about the Time Traveller, and his journey through the ages. The part that one immediately recalls about the story is when he goes forward in time to 802,701 AD, and comes across the peaceful Eloi and the brutal subterranean Morlocks. The traveller, however, continues further and witnesses the earth slowly dying as the Sun turns cold.
From the 19th century we now travel forward in time to the present to look at another great time travel book: The Restaurant at the end of the Universe by Douglas Adams. A part of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, the book is a superb take on time travel and among other things, tells us of the restaurant which has a special “live” show everyday of the universe ending.