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Replay

Replay is one of my favorite books, which I recently re-read for the first time in over a decade. It's that brand of SF which is more "speculative" than "science", working with a central idea where the essential plausiblity of the idea is shoved aside in favor of what that idea could imply. (This is similar, to, for instance, much of Vernor Vinge's fiction.)

Ine day in 1988, Jeff WInston has a heart attack. Waking up from the experience, he finds that he's occupying his 18-year-old body in college in early 1963. He tests the theory that his 25 years of memories are not just a dream by betting and winning big money on key sporting events from the year. Although he has to navigate explaining his apparent good fortune to those who know him, he nonetheless goes on to achieve anyone's wildest dreams of success in the business world, and fathers a daughter he dotes on. His life isn't perfect, but it seems a far sight better than it had been before.

Until 1988 rolls around and he collapses again, to again wake up in 1963, with all his accomplishments wiped out.

Jeff soon realizes that he's the victim - or beneficiary - of some unknown phenomenon causing him to live his life over and over, with only his memories surviving each experience. Eventually, the replays become more than he wants to deal with, and he retreats from the world - until one day in 1974 when he sees a poster for a blockbuster science fiction epic named Starsea, which had never existed before. He uses his wealth and influence to meet the producer, Pamela Phillips, who is of course another replayer, repeating almost exactly the same period of time that Jeff is. They become friends, lovers, mutual sources of support, and explorers of their strange odyssey.

Replay is many kinds of books at once: It considers what you might do if you could live a big block of your life over again, knowing then what you know now. It also suggests that perhaps you should be careful what you wish for, as it might be more than you bargained on.

Its central theme, of course, is one of permanence: How do we leave our mark on the world? How are we driven to affect the lives of others? If all we can really bring with us is what's in our minds and memories, then what, ultimately, is most valuable to us? (The film Groundhog Day considers many of these questions to similar effect, though in a much narrower scope.) Pamela turns out to be more motivated to find answers to the questions of what's happening to them. Jeff has to be pulled out of despair by her at first, and later embarks on his own journey of self-understanding, explaining how he feels as a result of the replays rather than discovering why they're happening. The distinction between them is subtle, and though Jeff is more sorely hurt by what they lose each time through the cycle, he loses less than Pamela as his attention turns inward.

It's a powerful and haunting book in this way. It does fall short in a couple of areas, however. First, whereas Groundhog Day ends with a conclusion that makes intuitive sense in providing plot closure, Replay's ending - and the peculiar quirk introduced into the nature of the replays - doesn't seem to have a particular motivation, except that it had to end somewhere.

Second, the ending that is there is not very satisfying, as it seems there are still things to be explored about Jeff and Pamela's existences even after the nominal ending. There's a definite feeling of "What happens next?" there, although not enough to fuel another book; a couple more chapters would have been welcome.

So it's not a perfect book, but it's still a very good one. And of course it wouldn't work at all without Grimwood's attention to the details of the past, especially of life in the 1963-65 time period, when many of the key scenes take place. Or his reasonable progression through the ways that Jeff and Pamela choose to spend their extra lives.

A well-crafted and moving novel.