I finished the new Listener puzzle, “The Fragmentation of Reality”, this morning. I found it very tough to break into; when I started on it yesterday I must have stared at the clues for 15 minutes or more before I finally figured one out. This morning, though, I figured out the name and one of the two titles that have to be found in the completed grid, and once I had that the rest fell very quickly. The way that the puzzle’s title and the first line of the instructions — “Having solved the clues, solvers must choose between 65,536 possible solution grids” — fit in with the theme is very funny! Nice puzzle.
Scratchings
David Scott Marley's online journal
Scratchings 
I too finished this crossword, but couldn’t grasp the relevance of the title or the opening line of the preamble. Please fill me in! And I assume we are to ring [explicative deleted — DSM] …
Well, on the surface the preamble refers to the 16 places (eight in group A and four each in groups B and C) where you have to decide which of two possibilities is the right one to put into the grid — 216 equals 65,536.
The relevance of this and the title to the theme that appears when you’ve finished the grid is hard to explain without giving too much away. Try looking up one of the two titles in group B (the one that is related to the four thematic entries in group C) on Wikipedia and see if that makes things clearer.
Speaking of giving too much away, I’m deleting a few words of your comment till the solution is published. But yes, I got the same answer for the ringed character that you did.