Book of the Week



Suppose you got the chance to live your life all over again at a certain age with all the memories of your old life still intact. What would you do? What would you change?

Suppose you found out that your new life only lasted until you reached the same age that you were the first time that you died.

Now what would you do?

Now suppose your new life ended and you started over yet again. And you suspected that you were destined to die at the same age as last time -- no matter what you did.

Now what would you do?

Such is the premise of Ken Grimwood's Replay, a 1987 science fiction novel which is too good to be confined to sci-fi buffs. It won the 1988 World Fantasy World and I could tell why. It takes a much used sci-fi premise -- the time loop -- and makes something genuinely memorable out of it. It is tempting to share more plot details but I suspect I have already written enough plot spoilers for this book as it is. Suffice it to say that the ending seemed really obvious in retrospect yet it did not while I was actually reading the book.

Unfortunately, Grimwood died in 2003 while writing a sequel to it. Not that this book needs a sequel but it would have been nice to see what Grimwood came up with.