Time on His Hands

Audio books are good for revisiting old favourites. Today at the Arvo Job I finished the 1973 science fiction classic The Man Who Folded Himself a.k.a 'the ultimate time-travel novel' by David Gerrold a.k.a. The Trouble with Tribbles guy. It had an introduction by Robert J. Sawyer, and an afterword by philosopher Geoffrey Klempner, and everything in between these interesting additions was mind and morals bending stuff. First time I read it way back when, it sent my young brain off on lots of tangential 'hey, but no, well does that make sense, yes, no, uhm, paradox? what the...?' kind of thoughts, but this time I had a better grip on the relationships between the innumerable variants of the main character(s) and the endless number of universes created by them in their quest for the meaning of their countless lives. That's not to say that my brain didn't still throw up a few questions à la 'but hey, how can he? oh yeah, I suppose so, but..." However, my maturer version of me mostly just went with the flow this time.

So, I shall now launch myself into once more journeying to the red planet with Kim Stanley Robinson. Given that my iPod full of audiobooks is mostly just for lunchtime listening, I calculate I'll be finished colonising Mars sometime around Christmas.