October the First Is Too Late ~ by Fred Hoyle

October the First Is Too Late ~ by Fred Hoyle, 1966, science fiction

Renowned scientist John Sinclair and his old school friend Richard, a celebrated composer, are enjoying a climbing expedition in the Scottish Highlands when Sinclair disappears without a trace for thirteen hours.  When he resurfaces with no explanation for his disappearance, he has undergone an uncanny alteration:  a birthmark on his back has vanished.  But stranger events are yet to come.  Things are normal enough in Britain, but in France it's 1917 and World War I is raging, Greece is in the Golden Age of Pericles, America seems to have reverted to the 18th century, and Russia and China are thousands of years in the future.  Against this macabre backdrop of coexisting time spheres, the two young men risk their lives to unravel the truth.  But truth is in the mind of the beholder, and who is to say which of these timelines is the 'real' one?  In this book, world-famous astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) explores fascinating concepts of time and consciousness.

Let me tell you how I happened to buy this science fiction novel. I was reading The Time Illusion by John Gribbin (2016), a Kindle Single I'd bought because I was reading something else.  And I came across this, which fascinates me:

"In 1966 I read a science fiction story, October the First is Too Late, written by the eminent astrophysicist Fred Hoyle.  It is an entertaining tale involving an unusual kind of time travel ― time on Earth is jumbled up so that, for example, Britain was 'in' 1966 while the North American continent was 'in' 1750, and a traveller could pass from one time to another by moving around the globe" (loc. 517).

I read another paragraph or two, returned to these two sentences, got online to find out more about Hoyle's book, and ended up buying the Kindle version.  The image at the top is the first edition, but the Kindle version I just bought has this cover.  I'm still trying to decide which I prefer.

My problem now is making myself finish the Kindle Single, even though I'm at the 92% mark.  The few paragraphs I read in Hoyle's book before buying it are calling to me.

Maybe you'll understand if I tell you about my undergraduate paper about whether or not time could flow in reverse.  Although we have time travel stories, where (for instance) someone could JUMP to the past, nevertheless the time traveler still experienced the "arrow of time" flowing on one direction (note the arrow on The Time Illusion book above).  One example of that is The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (1895).  I was not able to find a story where time "flowed" backwards, so I wrote a short story and included it in my paper.