Searching for a book - can't remember the name!!!

[freshwreckage]

Hey all,

I am trying to find a book I read in 85-86.

It is a time travel piece.
It is about a guy who has taken a job with a top secret organization within the us government. Once in, he finds that it is time travel. He also finds that we are at war with another country (Sect) that also has time travel capabilities.
On his first day on the job they are attacked by the enemy. our hero is sent into the past to chase one of the enemy down.
When traveling, they where a belt that is linked to their home time. When they get to a destination, time is frozen and grey, withing a couple of minutes, time begins to "Thaw" and speed up until it is normal. this give the the traveler time to inhabit someone's body(I think on this part)

Anyway, the guy ends up traveling through time so much, he ends up in the body of a woman he sleeps with in the story. Kind of gets to experience both sides of the relationship, in a way.

Does this squallid story line ring a bell with anyone?

Been searching for quite a few years.


Thanks all

 

[CassFrank]

This sounds like The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold (1973).

Two key giveaways - despite some differences in OP description: the time travel “belt” and sex with a female version of himself (the “squalid” story line). In Man he does use a belt to time travel and he has sex with a female version of himself - In fact, the sex aspect is a big part of the book and he gets funky with many versions of himself.

Review: “(his uncle) Jim left him a strange belt, which is actually an individual time machine. There are several types of time travel in SF, roughly divided into “past and future are fixed”… In this novel we get a fascinating mix of the two, with the hero constantly meeting future himself to get info. This is a caveat of the novel – a narcissistic paradise, for with whom you can be honest if not yourself? And yes, you can do other things with yourself too ”

And: “Perhaps The Man Who Folded Himself is some kind of milestone too. The first time someone wrote a full-length SF novel in which the main theme is using time travel in order to have sex with both male and female versions of yourself?”

The Man Who Folded Himself

This classic work of science fiction is widely consider…

www.goodreads.com