Hits Different is a new series that takes a second look at a TV show, song, album, episode, movie, scene, or clip from the past that, in our current context, just hits different. What was the world like when you first considered this piece of culture, and what’s changed? Does it hold up as timeless, or is it better left to the past? Pitch us at [email protected].
David Gerrold’s The Man Who Folded Himself is a queer time-travel novel about how bending time out of its straight line makes it possible to be queer. The protagonist, Daniel Eakins, is given a Timebelt by his Uncle Jim. He proceeds to use it to create virtually infinite alternate timelines, in which he meets many versions of himself, and often even has sex with them. His own past history morphs and changes and disappears; he remakes himself and even gives birth to himself, creating his own community and his own story. “I have spent a lifetime analyzing my life. Living it. And rewriting it to suit me,” he says at the conclusion, in bittersweet triumph.
