[David Gerrold 01] • The Man Who Folded Himself

Cover Artist: Dick Adelson

The Man Who Folded Himself is a 1973 sf novel by David Gerrold dealing with time travel. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1973 the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1974.

The main character in the book, Daniel Eakins, inherits a belt that allows him to travel in time. This results in a series of time paradoxes, which are only resolved by the existence of multiple universes histories. Eakins, who repeatedly encounters alternate versions of himself, finds himself in progressively more bizarre situations, ends up in an even more complex situation than the protagonist of Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 story "All You Zombies". Much of the book deals with the psychological, physical personal challenges that manifest where individual time travel is possible at the touch of a button. Eakins repeatedly meets himself; has sex with himself; ultimately cohabits with an opposite-sex version of himself. He spends much of his own contorted lifetime at an extended party with dozens of versions of himself at different ages, before understanding the true nature of the gathering his true identity.