36 Free Time Travel and Alternate History Web Serials and Ebooks

The Novikov self-consistency principle, named after Igor Dmitrievich Novikov, states that any actions taken by a time traveler or by an object that travels back in time were part of history all along, and therefore it is impossible for the time traveler to “change” history in any way. Events in the past and in the future do not exist. The only reality, the only thing that is real, is the present. This idea is called Presentism. This idea, however, runs into some serious problems when you start taking into account relativity.

Do you believe in time travel? Every time we remember something from the past or imagine something that will happen in the future, we engage in mental time travel. Scientists discovered that, whether we mentally travel back into the past or forward into the future, some of the same brain regions are activated.

A parallel universe, also known as an alternate universe, or alternate reality, is a hypothetical self-contained plane of existence, co-existing with one’s own. The sum of all potential parallel universes that constitute reality is often called a “multiverse”.

One obvious question that arises, then, is exactly how many of these parallel universes might there be. In a new study, Stanford physicists Andrei Linde and Vitaly Vanchurin have calculated the number of all possible universes, coming up with an answer of 10^10^16. Heaven, Hell, Olympus, and Valhalla are all “alternative universes” different from the familiar material realm. Plato reflected deeply on the parallel realities, resulting in Platonism, in which the upper reality is perfect while the lower earthly reality is an imperfect shadow of the heavenly.

Within this post, you’ll find 36 free time travel and alternate history web serials and ebooks. The collection swerves more towards alternate universes and near-future fictions but we’ve posted free time travel ebooks before, so feel free to combine these two compilations together. Safe travel!