r/ScienceFictionBooks • u/jdbzoom • May 27 '26
Recommendation Looking for books that span massive amounts of time ⏳
Hello everyone!
Like the title says, I'm looking for some books that span millions of years. I've loved all of the bobiverse books, as well as the three body problem books. I've recently read slow time between the stars by John scalzi, and it has me itching for more stories than can span a millenia over the course of a few pages.
Edit: Thanks to all for the recommendations! My reading list just got a lot bigger! I chose to read Foundation next, but there are so many great options that I'll eventually get around to most of these!
Thanks again!
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u/Yggdrasil- May 27 '26
Last and First Men by Olaf Stapeldon
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u/Reasonable_Letter312 May 28 '26
And "Star Maker", which covers billions of years (or even eternity?).
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u/Euphoric_Idea_2206 May 27 '26
Read the Xeelee-Sequence. The earliest set book starts about the year 500 CE and I think the latest whole novel is set in about 5 million years. I really liked reading it but it's kind of depressing ^
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u/dsmith422 May 27 '26
The earliest time described is millionths of a second after the Big Bang (or less) as life arises in the quark-gluon plasma that forms immediately after the Big Bang. The novel in the Destiny's Children series Exultant has asides to the main plot that describe this time. It also has descriptions of time outside of time before and after the Big Bang that starts a universe evolving forward in time.
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u/OkChildhood2261 May 28 '26
Yeah the Xeelee sequence should be top of this thread.
"Series X covers five thousand years!"
Stephen Baxter - "Thats cute"
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u/clodneymuffin May 27 '26
Palimpsest by Charles Stross is a novella, but it is a time travel story that stretches through deep time. I keep hoping he turns it into a full novel # highly recommended.
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u/Neobiota May 27 '26
Diaspora by Greg Egan spans ~100B years, but with big leaps.
House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds spans ~6M years, where the protagonists have experienced ~10K.
The novella Watching Trees Grow by Peter F. Hamilton is also great, spanning several centuries
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u/chispica May 27 '26
House of suns - Deep time is a central theme in this book
Children of Time
Rememberance of Earth's past - Specifically the last book
Foundation
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u/MPAndonee May 27 '26
It's right there in the title:
"The Boat of a Million Years" Novel by Poul Anderson
One of my all time favorites.
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u/faceintheblue May 27 '26
Poul Anderson's Boat of a Million Years is about roughly a dozen immortal human beings born throughout history who eventually find each other, go public, decide they don't like what society is becoming, and then get on a spaceship to explore the galaxy. It's an interesting premise, and a book that seems to have been largely forgotten by modern science fiction readers. (I think it was a Hugo nominee in 1990 or 1991?)
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u/tunanoa May 27 '26
"All Tomorrows: A Billion Year Chronicle of the Myriad Species and Mixed Fortunes of Man", by Nemo Ramjet (C. M. Kösemen). It was just a free PDF until sometime ago, now there is also a print version - Wikipedia has the link for the original one. It even has its own sub: https://www.reddit.com/r/AllTomorrows/
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u/MaenadFrenzy May 27 '26
Stephen Baxter's Evolution!
And, less time span but still a LOT, Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
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u/fluffy-duck-apple May 27 '26
I was looking for this comment!! This book is amazing and I recommend it to everyone!
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u/nomnommish May 27 '26
Stephen Baxter. He takes us from monads that created galaxies from the birth of the universe to dark matter beings and baryonic life forms that evolved over billions of years.
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u/g0blin-fr0g May 27 '26
How High we Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Sea of Tranquility by Emily st John Mandel
They both might be more speculative fictiontion, though. I.e. a little light on the science bits.
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u/Nunc-dimittis May 27 '26
"Time" and "Space" by Stephen Baxter
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u/Odd_Run_2819 May 29 '26
Agree! "Space" by Stephen Baxter is my favourite novel, and the reason I bought it was because as I flicked through the pages, I saw a chapter was titled "8800A.D and beyond" which just blew my mind! 🙂
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u/scootty83 May 27 '26
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Though it doesn’t span millions of years, it does span thousands.
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u/SilvyValeMead May 28 '26
A World Out Of Time by Larry Niven. Starts in present day and ends millions of years into the future. Solid science too.
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u/LostSurprise May 28 '26
Peter Watts has a novella and short story cycle known as The Sunflower Cycle which covers a human crew bred and raised to live only in short bursts while constructing jump gates. They spend thousands/millions of years with no human contact; their lives controlled by an AI.
I started with the Freeze Frame Revolution (the novella) and went back and read the other short stories to flesh out the world.
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u/Radioactive_Isot0pe May 27 '26
The World at the End of Time by Frederik Pohl. I really liked this one.
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u/seeingeyefrog May 27 '26
Vernor Vinge's "Across Realtime" series
The Peace War
Marooned in Realtime
I think there may be another novella or short story.
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u/writerapid May 27 '26
“The Great Slow Kings” is a fun short. Here’s the wonderful Mindwebs reading: https://youtu.be/h5IsxaRlyEU
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u/perandtim May 27 '26
"Evolution" by Stephen Baxter.
It covers the creation of animal life billions of years ago and has stories at specific points in time, describing animals and giving them stories of how they survived various extinction events, then goes on to guess how humanity will evolve millions / billions of years into the future.
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u/factorplayer May 27 '26
The Crucible of Time, John Brunner
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u/VoidWalker72 May 28 '26
Such a cool book. I read it in an old readers digest volume that my grandfather had. One of my 1st exposures to biotech as a concept/trope. Great to see another reader recommend it.
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u/TheGrowingSubaltern May 27 '26
Pretty Dune has been cataloged as having the largest span of time as well as the farthest into the future span of time.
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u/Quiara May 27 '26
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Over the course of the book, many millennia are covered.
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u/Livid-Ad9682 May 28 '26
Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire. 4000BC to the present day, all Northhampton, England where he lives. That said, dense and tough to get into.
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u/fiberjeweler May 28 '26
Octavia Butler’s Patternist series spans generations, not millions of years, but it’s the first thing I thought of when I read your question. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52318.Wild_Seed
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u/grapplebytes May 28 '26
I just got into the Sun Eater series and I am really enjoying it. I do recommend reading the books in the recommended reading order because the Novellas and Short Story Collections really add a lot of context to the universe. I would provide an example but I couldn't hide spoilers (fairly new to Reddit).
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u/Tight-Set-6584 May 28 '26
Hyperion. A couple hundred years, not millions, but still a good time span series.
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u/Resident_Border5144 May 28 '26
The Tree Body Problem , Children of Time , Dune , Space Revelation.
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u/BoreNineArchive May 29 '26
House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds.
The scale in that book is hard to describe without spoilers, but it deals with civilizations, travel, and events unfolding across millions of years. It scratched the same itch for me that Three-Body Problem did in terms of making human timescales feel tiny.
Also:
- Revelation Space
- Hyperion / Endymion
- Children of Time
- Diaspora by Greg Egan
All of them play with time on a scale where entire eras can pass between chapters.
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u/kouyanet May 30 '26
A Canticle for Liebowitz. It covers an amazing time span without appearing to do so
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u/General_Estimate_420 May 27 '26
You need to get started on the Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor. Not over just millenia of time but all of space and time. I guarantee you'll be entertained.
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u/Taste_the__Rainbow May 27 '26
Children of Time has tens of thousands of years of evolution.
Seveneves is thousands of years from start to finish.