Replay
Jeff Winston, forty-three, didn't know he was a replayer until he died and woke up twenty-five years younger in his college dorm room; he lived another life. And died again. And lived again and died again -- in a continuous twenty-five-year cycle -- each time starting from scratch at the age of eighteen to reclaim lost loves, remedy past mistakes, or make a fortune in the stock market. A novel of gripping adventure, romance, and fascinating speculation on the nature of time, Replay asks the question: "What if you could live your life over again?"Product Details
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In this intriguing fantasy adventure, Jeff Winston, a failing 43-year-old radio journalist, dies and wakes up in his 18-year-old body in 1963 with his memories of the next 25 years intact. He views the future from the perspective of naive 1963: "null-eyed punks in leather and chains . . . death-beams in orbit around the polluted, choking earth . . . his world sounded like the most nightmarish of science fiction." But Grimwood has transcended genre with this carefully observed, literate and original story. Jeff's knowledge soon becomes as much a curse as a blessing. After recovering from the shock (is the future a dream, or is it real life?), he plays out missed choices. In one life, for example, he falls in love with Pamela, a housewife who died nine minutes after Jeff; they try to warn the world of the disasters it faces, coming in conflict with the government and history. A third replayer turns out to be a serial killer, murdering the same people over and over. Jeff and Pamela are still searching for some missing part of their lives when they notice they are returning closer and closer to the time of their deaths, and realize that the replays and their times together may be coming to an end. 60,000 first printing; 75,000 ad/promo; film rights to United Artists; Literary Guild selection.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
The possibility of traveling back in time to relive one's life has long fascinated science fiction writers. Without a single gesture toward an explanation, this mainstream novel recounts the story of a man and a woman mysteriously given the ability to live their lives over. Each dies in 1988 only to awaken as a teenager in 1963 with adult knowledge and wisdom intact and the ability to make a new set of choices. Different spouses, lovers, children, careers, await them in each go-round of the past 25 years, as well as slightly altered versions of world events. Their deep commitment to one another continues through the centuries of their many lifetimes. This delightful and completely engrossing story will appeal to a wide variety of readers. Literary Guild selection. Marcia R. Hoffman, M.L.S., American Hoechst Corp., Somerville,
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
KEN GRIMWOOD (1944-2003) was a radio journalist in California. He was the author of Breakthrough, Elise, The Voice Outside and Into the Deep. He won the World Fantasy Award for Replay.
Customer Reviews
Great read!
I read this book when it first came out and loved it. It was good enough to buy it in audio form when they released it in this format. I enjoyed it as much as the first, second and third time. The reader kept my interest and didn't take away from the story. I've passed this book on to many friends - most consider it a grand love story - me, I just loved the way it ignited my imagination to consider what I would do with such limitless possibilities.
Despite the poor ending, this is one of the most engaging novels on the human condition I've ever read
Ken Grimwood's Replay does what science fiction should do more often: Allow the reader to examine mortality and the uncertainty of the human condition. You don't need spaceships, time travel machines, and alien invasions to do this. Sometimes all you need are a few questions: What if, when you die, you don't really die, but rather replay parts of your life over again? And what would you do differently if you knew the future? These questions are not foreign to science fiction (Back to the Future, etc), but they are rarely treated with sincerity and genuine consideration of possible answers. Grimwood has attempted this, and largely succeeds.
I was glad that Grimwood did not choose to recreate an imagined world for the novel. It's our world, beginning sometime in 1963 and ending in 1988. It's a place we think we know well, and so Grimwood doesn't have to spend a lot of time suspending our disbelief in a civilization somewhere on the planet X95JQ. The setting is our world, and the characters are people like us.
For the most part, the writing is good, but Grimwood does seem to hesitate from time to time. He is quite convincing when describing the characters' creepy and beautiful transitions from not replaying to replaying. While there's probably too much chatty dialogue, I appreciated some of the more emotional and thoughtful discussions about the characters' experiences. For every sappy or clichéd line, there are plenty of others that are genuinely touching and provocative.
The novel alternately disappoints and surprises the reader during the final thirty pages or so. It's clear the story got away from Grimwood, and he struggled to find a place for the novel to end. In doing so, he writes past the ending, giving the reader too conclusive a statement about what the protagonist has experienced, as well as a barely relevant epilogue.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed this book. One reviewer here reduces Replay to a boomer's midlife crisis. If that's all there was to the novel, I would still find it successful. How many fantasy and science fiction novels are there about boomers going through midlife crises? What a unique premise for a book. But really, the novel is about more than that. It's about mortality and rebirth, both literal and figurative. It's about the terrible burden of foreknowledge, crushing helplessness and overwhelming guilt. It's about the significance of the pivotal moments and events of twenty-five years in American history. It's about the selfishness and materialism of the 1980s. And it's about striving to make a mark of any kind against the random and chaotic canvas of the universe.
Haven't I met you somewhere before?
Jeff Winston, a 43 year old radio journalist of (at best) modest accomplishments going through the motions of a lack-luster marriage, dies of cardiac arrest in 1988. To his shock, he opens his eyes and returns to consciousness in 1963 in the very healthy young male body of his former 25 year old self. Without ever knowing the reason it has happened, he comes to grips with his situation and realizes that all of his adult experience, his adult wisdom and his awareness of events to come remain intact.
Of course, with that advance knowledge of the outcome of major sports events and the growth of companies such as IBM, Apple and Sony, Jeff finds it simple, through strategic gambling and investments, to quickly amass a spectacular fortune and become one of the wealthiest men in the world. After his attempts to "re-meet" his wife fail, Winston simply opts for a life of sexual decadence with someone he meets in one of the Las Vegas casinos. Despite the high life he is now enjoying, Jeff clearly recalls the pain of his "death" by heart attack and so he is also most careful to hold himself to the highest standards of cardiac health. But, like the events around which he accumulated his wealth, Jeff discovers that the event of his death in 1988 is also unavoidable and he again dies with a painful heart attack.
Awakening again in 1963, Jeff realizes that he is trapped in an endless cycle of death and re-birth and that, yet another time, he is faced with the choice of how to live the next 25 years of his truncated and ever-repeating life. In his second life (or was it his third or fourth cycle?), he meets Pamela Phillips, a world-acclaimed film-maker. Because of certain anachronisms that don't fit with his knowledge of how world history unrolls in the turbulent decade of the 1960s, Jeff realizes that Phillips is also a "re-player", another person trapped in her own cycle of death and re-birth. Pamela and Jeff discover their love for one another, re-discover that love in one "replay" after another and attempt to make the best of the opportunities offered them to improve their lives and the lives of those around them!
The subjective moral of Grimwood's text in "Replay" is clear enough! Strike an appropriate, comfortable balance between a purely hedonistic self-centered life focused on the present and a life focused on what might be, what is yet to come and the benefit of family, friends and the world around you. The difficulty with this balance rests with the realization that life is both tenuous and finite. We never know when the ending will arrive. The objective message, much easier to understand but perhaps equally difficult to implement in a real world setting is to twist your knickers only around those issues over which you actually have control. Nothing else is worth dwelling upon in terms of mental or physical stress and effort!
There has been much debate over whether it is more appropriately labeled "sci-fi" or "fantasy". Personally, I'll opt for fantasy as Grimwood made no attempt to discuss or hypothesize a mechanism for the re-playing phenomenon. At the same time, I'm going to deduct one star from its rating for a sci-fi quibble. Grimwood chose to fix Winston's and Phillip's baseline of experiences, knowledge and history at the level of their first life. As a sci-fi fan comfortable with the multi-worlds concept, I didn't see any reason to favour one world over another. As both Phillips and Winston re-played their lives in a linear fashion, there was no obvious fundamental reason to suggest that, of necessity, they would be re-born in their "first" universe. Why not their second, third or indeed a universe that they had yet to experience?
Small potatoes worry about a wonderful story! "Replay" is a heart-warming thought-provoking morality tale that will resonate with any thinking reader. Highly recommended.
Paul Weiss
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