Time traveller going backwards and mad in museum [duplicate]

Question

Interesting short story I read 1970-80s.

A lifepod containing one occupant appears at a museum. At first hairy, dirty and wildly incoherent, the occupant becomes calmer, cleaner and communicative over time. Holding up messages to his window he explains he is travelling slowly backwards in time.

His plan is to build up potential then catapult himself into the future. He's a genius and feels he belongs there. The museum director debates whether to tell him he will be mad when he gets there and what that will mean for the world.

I thought it was called something like either 'Cometh the hour, cometh the man' or 'Uphill slowly, downhill fast'. But can't find either.

Answer 1

Ian Watson's The Very Slow Time Machine, I think.

At first hairy, dirty and wildly incoherent, the occupant becomes calmer, cleaner and communicative over time. Holding up messages to his window he explains he is travelling slowly backwards in time.

**

A capsule appears from nowhere in 1985 containing a mad and incoherent old man whose life appears to be running backwards. The capsule appears to have been sent back in time from the near future and is impregnable, but the highly efficient recycling system inside the allows its occupant to sustain himself. As he grows younger and saner he begins to deliver a message.

His plan is to build up potential then catapult himself into the future.

From "Cosmic Wormholes"'s description of Watson's work:

It turns out that he is from the future but is moving back in time in order to "catapult ” himself even further into the future.