The Time Ships-Stephen Baxter


The Time Machine- H G Wells

hard to say, at a certain distance you're pretty much reaching another dimension/reality path i think...

something like oversoul7 or entoverse, taking place in several realities at once, where timeframes tend to get pretty blurry.

There are plenty. Asimov's Foundation series comes to mind. I recently read Vernor Vinge's superbly entertaining "A Fire Upon the Deep," and it's at least several hundred thousand years in the future.

Technically, the Babylon % timeline extended a million years in either direction. The last episode of season 4 showed the extended timeline.

Rock and Rule - "the war was over, mankind had eliminated itself. All that was left were small animals: dogs, cats, rats. But that was a long time ago...."

these are all great - THANKS EVERYONE!!!

Well, the thing is this. SF is about the interaction of humans with technology. Typically that technology leads to space travel, and it becomes speculation from there... hence aliens, etc.

The I Robot book, still stand as one of the clearest illustrations of this phenomenon. Asimov started with the premise of a thinking computer and developed the three laws as a way of insuring it did what it was supposed to do (given the level of litigation at the time). And when it was written, simple robots were a reality. Thinking machines were no longer pure fantasy, but were actually being researched.

Another good example is the movie Demolition Man. This movie is an extrapolation of what could happen if the Rpublican New Deal (written by Gingritch) were to come to full fruition. Everything in that move from the lojacking to the simplification of language is detailed in the republican plan.

Once you get too far into the future, it gets harder and harder to write "pure" sf, or at least, speculative fiction. We could take the Roddenbury timeline and fast forward a million years until we're pure energy beings. But trying even to understand that form is beyond most people and trying to figure out motivations, trials, and conquests for a good story would be almost impossible. That's why most SF stays within 100 years or so.

Oh, and actually, yes, ALL SF is set in the future. Otherwise it becomes science fantasy. Granted some works were written in their future (1984) which we have now surpassed, but the effort was made at the time to project forward. Steampunk is Fantasy, Cyberpunk is SF.

Charles Sheffield's "Tomorrow and Tomorrow" goes until the end of time.

Iain Banks' stories about The Culture seem to be pretty far in the future. Individual motiviation is still understandable while set in an ultra-tech environment.

Simon R.Green's Deathstalker series also seems to be pretty far in the future, but it's not what I would call hard sci-fi.

And don't forget the E. E. "doc" Smith's Lensmen series, one of the pioneers of the space opera genre. The date is never discussed, but there is the impression of a significant number of years.

Two by Stephen Baxter might just nail it -

The novel "Evolution" traces one mammalian dna lineage from just before the dino killing meteor to when the Sun finally expires. Really wonderful. Kind of like Michner for scifi.

However the short story "The Gravity Mine" might win. Beginning in a future far enough away that humanity is free of biology and gravity, it spans several more billions of years, ending very close to the end our universe... or not. A top ten for me. Like to hear what you think.

Here it is online:
www.infinityplus.co.uk/storie...ine.htm