Monday, February 11, 2013

By his boots-traps

After an earlier two-dimensional-lifeforms post, helpful commenter Narad called our scholarly attention to a similarly-themed book.  

The Man who Folded Himself is a version of Flat Stanley for a more mature readership. After losing one dimension in a tragic planoforming accident, the narrator fails to find social acceptance in an intolerant three-dimensional world. It is all very coming-of-agey and poignant in an emo way. Eventually he commits origami and turns himself into a giraffe.

Of course two-dimensionality is familiar territory for science-fiction cover artists...

...though usually in the sense of hollowed-out rather than flattened.


HA HA had you going for a while there. In fact Folded revisits the solipsistic SF dream of a world occupied solely by copies of oneself, here accomplished by time-travel rather than cloning. Readers always respond well to stories about "sex with oneself via time travel" and being one's own parents, in which the self-sufficient libertarian ideal of owing nothing to anyone else finally reaches fruition. It is a theme that Disch tried to parody out of existence in 1964 but to no avail. It must be a tradition, or an old charter or something.

It all seems a lot of trouble. You hardly need time travel to find opinionated obnoxious gits who are wrong about everything.

Bonus Boots-traps via Flaming Carrot #16 and #17! Also boots-shooting, boots-stabbing, and vicious man-on-boot shovel action.

***** SPOILER ALERT *****
The town is saved when it rains overnight and the boots all drown.

9 comments:

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

turnabout is fair play, smut. The Disch link is inoperative.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

However, I always kind of liked the Gerrold book.

Smut Clyde said...

Odd, Dischlink is fine in NZ. Perhaps you upside-downy people suffer under restrictions on what books Google will let you look at.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

even odder. Now it worked.

I may just go old school and blame fish.

Smut Clyde said...

Oops, forgot the frames from Enki Bilal's "Death of Orlaon". Now ficqsed.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

It all seems a lot of trouble. You hardly need time travel to find opinionated obnoxious gits who are wrong about everything.


http://www.empireofthesenseless.com

Substance McGravitas said...

Jesus Christ, I wouldn't go back and have sex with me. I know where I've been.

M. Bouffant said...

McG, you could go to before you'd been anywhere.

Hitler's what?

And my aging eyes thought they saw The Man Who Pooped HImself.

Substance McGravitas said...

McG, you could go to before you'd been anywhere.

And curse myself?