No, it’s half-twisted.
I once read a book called “The Man Who Folded Himself.” A time travel tale, it used the premise that every time the hero travelled, he left himself there and started a new branch of reality. He encountered himself a lot, even saw himself die several times. When he had sex with himself, he rationalized that it was merely masturbation.
MarkyDeSade
From Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary -
mas.tur.bation (n).
- the stimulation or manipulation of one’s own genitals resulting in an orgasm; sexual self-gratification.
- the stimulation, other than by coitus, of another’s genitals resulting in an orgasm.
So we were both right. Or both wrong. Call this one a tie?
-Redhawke
Quoth DrFidelius:
No, only “Zombies” had the sex. “By His Own Bootstraps” had similar causal structures, but with books and words, not DNA.
And while we’re on the topic of science fiction, Asimov wrote a little ditty about cloning oneself, but duplicating the X chromosone instead of using the Y. Heinlein later used this concept in one of his novels; when the characters involved (inevitably) had sex, they rationalized it as masturbation.
“Clone, clone of my own,
With the Y chromosome turned to X…”
Plotlines I can’t remember anymore, but I can remember a fat man in a bowtie singing bawdy songs and reciting limericks with glee.
What? Heinlein’s written this story, and Asimov has too?
And in The Persistence of Vision by John Varley, he’s got like three short stories that are variations on this theme. I thought he was just a weirdo, a little too obsessed with this pet idea of his.
But Heinlein had the same idea? And Asimov did too?
Sheesh. Those guys needed to get out of the house more! 
Daniel
Correction: Bolo tie, not bowtie.
The memory is the second thing to go.
Yes.
Why necessarily? Can embryos not be cloned? If it’s possible, it’s certainly plausible to have a clone who is the same age as you (give or take a few days).
Man, I spent the weekend away from this thread, came back, and it’s weirder than ever. It’s enough to make me hit the Klein bottle.
I have a m8 who does that, he has serious probs