This was the last book of 1915 I read. I kept putting it off because I was sure it would be incredibly boring and all about philosophy. I mean, Ouspensky, right? Surprise!! This was amazing, one of the best. Guess what? It is about time travel! I used to be obsessed with time travel and have read so many time travel novels, and even written some, and even got one published. So I thought I knew all the usual time travel tropes and tricks. But Strange Life of Ivan Osokin is completely original. It’s a completely realistic novel about time travel. This is what time travel would really be like if it were possible, or maybe it even is actually happening constantly.

You know how sometimes the character travels back in time but because of the rules of time travel, or to keep from changing the future, or because of meddling by the super-villains, nothing can be changed? This book is NOT like that. In this story, nothing changes because the protagonist is too stuck in his ways to change, even though that’s the very reason why he traveled back in time to live life again as his younger self. You think you would do things differently if you were fourteen again, but would you really? Why would you, you are the same person you were before. At first I felt very sympathetic to Ivan as he makes the identical mistakes he set out to avoid. Because being in school is so horrible. It’s easy to think if you had a chance to do it all over again you’d be a success this time, but actually it’s a no-win situation and you still wouldn’t want to do your homework. And I felt sympathetic to Ivan as he decided that this time his mother wouldn’t die. It is such an awful and impossible thing to believe, that your mother will ever die, no wonder he still can’t believe it even after he’s already lived through it. Even after he’s longed so much to see his mother again, when he does get to spend time with her, he’s churlish and uncommunicative just like he was the first time around, and he still causes her trouble that (he believes) contributes to her early death.

But it’s hard to maintain sympathy with Ivan as he spirals down through his life. The magician told him he would remember that he had traveled through time as long as he wanted to remember it, and he doesn’t want to remember anymore. Then he meets Zinaida. She’s the reason he wanted to have a second chance, a chance to win her. When we met her the first time, at the very end of their relationship, she seemed sulky and spoiled and to be toying with Ivan. But once I got to see the actual arc of their relationship, everything she did and said made a lot of sense; this was very nicely laid out. I was really just at the edge of my seat waiting to see what would happen when the loop closed. And is this the second time he’s lived through his life, or maybe the third? Can he get out of the loop? Usually, I’m pretty cavalier about spoiling the books of 1915 but I think I’ll pause here, because you probably really want to go out and read this very accessible and short science fiction novel.

I said that The Forged Note was the book of 1915 that made me think the most, but actually it was this one. This book made me think really hard about me and my life and what the hell should I do? You can’t ask for much more than that. Just in case you are too lazy to read Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, I’ll give you the fruits of my labor. Obviously, Ivan is just like me, and possibly you, so I studied his mistakes closely to see how I can avoid them. These are his problems. 1) He daydreams all the time, like me. After becoming a schoolboy again, how does he occupy his mind? By thinking about a made-up universe called Oceanis. Well, naturally. 2) He never talks to anyone about real stuff. Not once does he tell a friend, “Hey, this weird thing is happening to me. I think I traveled through time.” And he never tells Zinaida how he really feels; he just blathers on. 3) Ivan never mends fences with anyone he’s had a fight with. He just assumes they hate him forever and he writes them off. I bet an apologetic letter to his uncle would’ve gone a long way. 4) He cares what other people think about him. He gambles away his last dollar because he’s self-conscious about how he looks to a bunch of rich people. Actually, no one really cares what anyone else does and they’re all completely oblivious because they’re busy thinking about Oceanis or being caught in their loop themselves. So why bother? 5) He’s hella lazy. How about when Zinaida tries to get him a job as a civil servant and he turns it down even though he’s penniless, because he’s a poet. 6) He’s always making plans for the future, or thinking about how he did things wrong in the past. He is in the present zero percent of the time.

That’s the one that really got me, because isn’t making a catalog of your own/Ivan’s mistakes just another way to defer everything to the future or past? This one seems like the real problem, especially in a time travel scenario, which is every scenario really because in regular life you are supposedly traveling from the past into the future but all the time you are only ever in the present. Strange Life of Ivan Osokin makes it clear that everyone is going through their life as a zombie, stuck in the same patterns they’ve always been stuck in, and the only other option is to wake up. So then I got to thinking, is it really a good thing to be woke? Because if you are awake and present, that means being awake and present to a lot of extremely unpleasant experiences. Honestly there are advantages and disadvantages to being a zombie. Ultimately I decided that since being in the present is one of my wife’s very few interests I might as well be there with her since I married her and stuff.

Anyway, that’s enough about me. Another feature of Strange Life of Ivan Osokin is a recurring reference to an English fairy tale which is very haunting; I don’t know if it’s a real fairy tale or if Ouspensky made it up. And there are a few references to an upcoming revolution in Russia that are interesting. And I really like the open-ended nature of the book’s conclusion: The Gurdjieff-type magician has warned Ivan that it’s very easy to get distracted, and you can almost see it about to happen to Ivan. Because on the one hand everything that Ivan thinks he wants is available to him, but on the other hand he knows that it won’t work out and he is doomed to make the same mistakes again unless he becomes a completely different person.

I wonder what he will do? I was really pleased to learn that Ouspensky has a non-fiction treatment of the same material, called A New Model of the Universe. ( )

"If I know and remember, I shall do everything differently"
By sally tarbox on 30 November 2017

Probably *3.5 stars for this unusual and well-written tale which opens in 1902 Moscow. Ivan Osokin is seeing the girl he loves off at the station; he can't accede to her requests that he accompany her as he's almost broke. And she warns she won't wait for him more than a couple of months. When she finally becomes engaged to another, Osokin is suicidal; he pays a visit to a mystical man in town where he bemoans the fact that he can't live his life over. If he only had his time again, he'd avoid expulsion from school, alienating his rich uncle, bad behaviour in the army and frittering away a life-saving inheritance in casinos. The wizard warns it would all be just the same.. but actions a bit of time travel, and our hero wakens in his boarding school dormitory...
Before long, Osokin is observing "It seems to me that everything repeats itself, not once or twice but scores of times, like the 'Blue Danube' on a barrel organ. And I know it all by heart."
Interesting premise ( )

Definitely written by a philosopher.

40 years after first reading it I still remember the plot and the depressing point of this novel. ( )

Ivan Osokin is a young man from the pre-revolution Russian upper crust who has managed to squander every advantage that his life circumstance has bestowed upon him. When he finds himself with only 30 kopeks to his name and realizes that he is about to lose the love of a wonderful young woman, in desperation he goes to a magician and begs to be sent back in time for a do-over of the past dozen or so years so he can make some better choices. Part of the bargain is that he will remember that he has been through it all before.

The magician sends him back to his boyhood at boarding school and we follow him as he manages to muck everything up in exactly the same way as before — from expulsion from school, to loss of his military commission and gambling away his inheritance in a drunken evening at the roulette table. He finds himself once again with only 30 kopeks and the loss of his true love.

One more time he presents himself to the magician in his parlor and predictably asks to return to the past so he can make better decisions and have a better outcome. Gradually he begins to realize that no matter how many times he goes back, the result will be the same or possibly worse.

The magician offers a different solution — to choose life, and know that in order to succeed he will have to learn to be less willful and to make certain sacrifices. In the past, he has not appreciated the consequences of his willful actions.

The magician gives him some choices to think about, and as he mills about the streets of Moscow, he has a sudden epiphany: The world would not change one iota if he were not there. ( )