Review: The Man Who Folded Himself

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When Daniel Eakins's Uncle Jim dies, he inherits a belt that allows him to travel through time...

I haven't had a ton of time to read since my son was born. In fact, I'm typing this with him asleep in the crook of my arm. The two or three weeks it took me to finish this are no indication of the book's quality. It was pretty fucking good.

In The Man Who Folded Himself, David Gerrold uses Daniel Eakins to explore the nature of time and of man himself. The way he handles time travel has been used by other writers since this book's original publication: changing the past creates a parallel universe and the time traveler is the only one who knows of the existence of the previous timeline.

Daniel travels through time, meeting other versions of himself, and sometimes having sex with them., sometimes with multiple versions at a time. Is it gay if you're having sex with another version of yourself? Joking aside, Daniel goes on a journey of self discovery and ultimately winds up back where he started, as I suspected he might.

The Man Who Folded Himself may be the best time travel story I've ever read. 4.5 out of 5 tribbles.

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