Time Travel Part II

A smart reader will realize that if I did have a time machine yesterday evening, I simply could have gone back in time a couple hours, thereby giving me plenty of time to write an elegant post, which probably would have dealt with my time traveling.

What I didn’t have time to write about last night was that at the book fair we went to last week I picked up a classic Sci-Fi novel about time travel. I didn’t know that it was a classic until I looked it up on the internet and discovered that it was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1973 and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1974. (I guess it got the nod in multiple years because it did it’s own bit of time traveling. The Man Who Folded Himself is still available new on Amazon, but you can only get the hardcover as used, like I did.

I am a sucker for time travel stories, I even like them when they show up in Chick Flicks like 1980’s Somewhere in Time and more recently 2001’s Kate & Leopold. So I really wanted to like this book, but it got too confusing nearly right from the start and then just got weird.

The first thing that is postulated is that if time travel is possible, paradox is impossible. So there is none of that worry accidentally bumping into yourself and causing the collapse of the known universe. And unlike the time travel in Lost, you can effect the future.

The protagonist of the story time travels back one day and befriends himself. They do the usual first thing, the himself from the future brings back the sports section and they go to the horse races and make a few thousand bucks on the races. He and his one day older self become fast friends. They do stuff together, go out to eat, take in movies. Pretty soon it is cue the Cristopher Cross music for the obligatory slow motion walk on the beach at sunset scene. They have sex with themselves. Yikes!

So I rationalize. I tell myself that it’s simply a complex form of masturbation, and masturbation is all right. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world indulge in it at one time or another, and the other five per cent are liars.

I haven’t finished the book yet, but the Wikipedia entry mentions that somewhere down the line he ends up living with an opposite-sex version of himself. How the heck that happens I am curious to see, but the cynic in me thinks that it had to added to make up for homosexual bit or the book wouldn’t have been published.