From archive (archive) From: ecl@mtgzy.UUCP (Evelyn C. Leeper) Organization: AT&T, Middletown NJ Subject: REPLAY by Ken Grimwood Date: 5 Mar 88 23:35:26 GMT REPLAY by Ken Grimwood Berkley, 1988 (c1987), 0-425-10640-3, $3.95. A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper WHAT IF you could live your life over and over again? That's the back-cover blurb to this unique alternate worlds/time travel novel. And that's the chance Jeff Winston gets when he wakes up from his fatal heart attack to find himself back in college. He resolves that things will be different this time--and they are, in part because he, like so many other time travelers, can remember the outcomes of all sorts of sporting events to bet on. (Quick, who won the 1963 World Series?) But soon 1988 rolls around again and bang! heart attack and he's back in 1963 again. And round it goes. In one cycle he meets Pamela, another replayer. Together they try to make sense of what's happening. It's not easy--forewarned is not necessarily forearmed and, as in so many time travel stories, trying to improve history often backfires. And Winston discovers that often the knowledge that "next time" he could do things differently makes his decisions this time seem meaningless. But he keeps trying to change things. Sometimes he leads a life of dissipation; other times he tries to change the world. Sometimes he tries working behind the scenes; other times he tells everyone he can predict the future. (The latter scenario is particularly chilling.) One wonders how a novel such as this could have a satisfying resolution, but Grimwood manages it very well. As a unique approach to alternate history and time travel, REPLAY is highly recommended. Evelyn C. Leeper (201) 957-2070 UUCP: ihnp4!mtgzy!ecl ARPA: mtgzy!ecl@rutgers.rutgers.edu Copyright 1988 Evelyn C. Leeper Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books.reviews,rec.arts.sf.written Path: news.ifm.liu.se!solace!news.stealth.net!cdc2.cdc.net!news.texas.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.erols.net!nntp04.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!news.cais.net!netnews.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!news From: samuel@dcez.com (Samuel Lubell) Subject: Review: Replay by Ken Grimwood Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author=Samuel Lubell Lines: 58 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu (Graystreak) Reply-To: samuel@dcez.com Organization: Posted via CAIS Internet X-Newsreader: (ding) Gnus v0.94 Date: Sun, 18 Aug 1996 03:12:55 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Lines: 58 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1054 rec.arts.books.reviews:1908 rec.arts.sf.written:174218 Replay by Ken Grimwood Review Copyright 1996 Samuel Lubell This is a very intriguing twist on the time travel story. The central character dies in the opening sentence and then finds himself back in college, as a young man with all his memories of his older self, but no idea where this younger self left his car. He does the sort of thing a sf reader expects a time traveler to do, try to prevent the assassination of JFK, place bets at sporting events, buy stock in the right companies to become a multi-millionaire. But the woman he loves, his wife in his past life, refuses to have anything to do with him and he ends up marrying unhappily and having a daughter. Then, at exactly the same age as before, he dies again and wakes up back in college. He is literally a replayer and nothing he does can have any meaning since, come October 1988 he dies again and reverts back to square one. The author manages to vary these lives considerably, and shows Jeff's anger at the meaninglessness of it all. Then, midway through the book, after several of these repeating lifetimes, he sees a blockbuster movie which he had never even heard existed--because it hadn't. There is another replayer, a woman, who can also remember these repeating existences, allowing a continuing relationship. There is also a new threat, the two realize that they don't go back to the same day. When they die and restart their life each time, they restart their life a little closer to the day they die. The remainder of the book is their efforts to find other replayers, to find a cause/cure for their repeating, and to find a way of ending their slow loops towards a final death. There are several philosophical points that are brought up as to what happens with these worlds the replayers have changed once they die and return back to their earlier lives, making new changes in the world. There is also the question as to the responsibility that comes from knowing about future disasters, serial killers etc. The author does a successful job with the non-linear nature of the book's central idea and throws in enough surprises that the reader doesn't think he is reading the same story over and over. There is a slight flaw, at one point it appears that Jeff cannot make major changes in history (the idea that history corrects itself) but in another life he radically alters the future of the world. There's also the unanswered question as to why this is happening, although the characters do meet someone with his own, unusual, theories. Is it fantasy or sf? The idea of time travel is an old sf trope but this book never resolves the question of what is happening or how. It won the World Fantasy Award so at least some people think it is fantasy and not sf. This book is highly recommended to anyone who likes time-travel books and does not insist on strict plausibility and hard science fiction. %B Replay %E Ken Grimwood %C New York %D August 1992 (1st edition Arbor House, Jan 1987) %I Ace Books %O softcover, $4.99 %G ISBN 0-441-71592-3 %P 313pp