Book från circa 1983 om en man som kan teleportera i olika kopi av sig själv

Titans sirener , en roman av Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. ; först publicerad 1959, omtryckt i många utgåvor .

Från Wikipedia sammanfattning:

Malachi Constant is the richest man in a future America. He possesses extraordinary luck that he attributes to divine favor which he has used to build upon his father's fortune. He becomes the centerpoint of a journey that takes him from Earth to Mars in preparation for an interplanetary war, to Mercury with another Martian survivor of that war, back to Earth to be pilloried as a sign of Man's displeasure with his arrogance, and finally to Titan where he again meets the man ostensibly responsible for the turn of events that have befallen him, Winston Niles Rumfoord.

Rumfoord comes from a wealthy New England background. His private fortune was large enough to fund the construction of a personal spacecraft, and he became a space explorer. Traveling between Earth and Mars, his ship—carrying Rumfoord and his dog, Kazak—entered a phenomenon known as a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, which is defined in the novel as "those places ... where all the different kinds of truths fit together." When they enter the infundibulum, Rumfoord and Kazak become "wave phenomena", somewhat akin to the probability waves encountered in quantum mechanics. They exist along a spiral stretching from the Sun to the star Betelgeuse. When a planet, such as the Earth, intersects their spiral, Rumfoord and Kazak materialize, temporarily, on that planet.

Historien ligger kring en man som kan teleportera sig i olika kopior av sig själv.

Winston Niles Rumfoord är inte den centrala karaktären men nästa viktigaste karaktär i boken; han exakt inte teleporterar men han är i konstigt tillstånd som får honom att materialisera på olika ställen.

Jag tror att mycket av boken äger rum på Mars men de besöker även Mercury och jag tror på månen.

Delar av boken är inställda på jorden, på Mars, på kvicksilver och på Saturnus måne Titan.

En av de saker som stod ut var istället för att använda rymdstrumpor som de tog piller kallade goofballs som gav dem luft.

Det var vad som bekräftade identifieringen. Utdrag, med tillägg läggs till:

Unk's mate, the mother of young Chrono, 'was in instructress in the Schliemann Breathing School for Recruits. Schliemann breathing, of course, is a technique that enables human beings to survive in a vacuum or in an inhospitable atmosphere without the use of helmets or other respiratory gear.

It consists, essentially, of taking a pill rich in oxygen. The bloodstream takes on this oxygen through the wall of the small intestine rather than through the lungs. On Mars, the pills were known officially as Combat Respiratory Rations, in popular parlance as goofballs.

Schliemann Breathing is at its simplest in a benign but useless atmosphere like that of Mars. The breather goes on breathing and talking in a normal manner, though there is no oxygen for his lungs to take in from the atmosphere. All he has to remember is to take his goofballs regularly.

The school in which Unk's mate was an instructor taught recruits the more difficult techniques necessary in a vacuum or in a harmful atmosphere. This involves not only pill-taking, but plugging one's ears and nostrils, and keeping one's mouth shut as well. Any effort to speak or to breathe would result in hemorrhages and probably death.