Weekly Short Story: The Cabinet of Oliver Naylor by Barrington J. Bayley

Barrington J. Bayley's science fiction short story The Cabinet of Oliver Naylor has so many different facets to it that I left it with a sense of frustration at not being able to put it all together.  Appearing in the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1977 Annual World's Best SF, Bayley's tale primarily concerns itself with the deep, deep space voyage of Englishman Oliver Naylor.  He is both a philosopher and inventor, and takes advantage of a future invention called the Harkham velocitator that enables faster-than-light travel...even to several hundred powers of the speed of light.  Naylor's universe is an infinite one with an infinite level of complexity: the one problem with space travel like this is that it's still nearly impossible to find one's way back.  And that is the problem that Naylor sets out to solve, using the concepts of identity and logic machines to aid him.  Along the way he picks up a space hitchhiker...which not only begins to eerily resemble Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in some respects, but also turns out to be a big, big, mistake for the reclusive, solitary traveler...

This story delves into speculation about how society might develop in the near-future while presenting space travel more in terms of how we travel in a personal manner (as we do by car) rather than the traditional sci-fi picture of large spaceships and fleets...I liked that.  It also went a little deep philosophically about the concepts of identity and logic...muddy waters to wade through when you're reading a work of fiction.  I believe that the author may have tried to fit too much stuff into one story...or maybe I'm just not getting all that he was trying to express.  Some of The Cabinet of Oliver Naylor seems farcical while other parts set forth the notion that, regardless how advanced humanity may become technologically, it still has to deal with its repugnant basic nature that doesn't grow with the science...now that I get.  This is one story that I would truly welcome others to read and give feedback...