Ken Grimwood’s Replay (1986) is the story of a man who dies in 1988 and finds himself back in his youthful body and dorm room of 1963—over and over and over again. He knows the future, he can change the world, but no matter what he changes he’s going to live through twenty-five years and die on that day and start again. And just when you think you know where the book is going, it starts to get really interesting.
The book isn’t just the one gimmick. Grimwood explores the idea in a proper science fictional way, ringing a lot of variations on it. It’s also brilliantly written—tense, taut, fascinating. It’s a quiet almost pastoral character study as much as anything, but when I’m reading it, I can’t put it down. Nevertheless, I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation about it that wasn’t on the lines of: “If that happened to me, I’d…” The idea of re-living your own life while relieved from the burden of money worries and uncertainty is very appealing, and this is part of what makes the book so seductive.
It won the World Fantasy Award and was shortlisted for the Clarke Award, while not coming near any of the others—if anyone wants an example of the usefulness of juried awards for finding brilliant things nobody else is paying attention to, this is a good one. But while the replaying isn’t ever scientifically explained, and therefore could be considered fantasy at a stretch, this is not like a fantasy novel. It’s absolutely SF in look and feel.
Spoilers, I mean it!
I very much like the different lives Jeff leads—the great riches life, the laid back life with Judy, the one with drugs, the one with the film Starsea, the one where he changes all of history. This is very much a story of his relationships with women—his original wife, Linda, his college girlfriend, and then Pamela, who is literally the only woman in the world for him because she’s the only other replayer. (Apart from the lunatic murderer they find.) Once he finds Pamela it’s a different book, the lives start to get shorter and the possibility of losing life is again on the table. That’s a very good piece of pacing. It really works.
At the end, when Jeff doesn’t die but instead carries on with his original life, I don’t think he’d be any better equipped for it than he would have been without all those extra lifetimes of doing different things. Every single time he has used his knowledge of the future to make himself rich and increase his options. Back in the present and moving into an uncertain future, the skills of money management and cheating by knowing what will happen won’t help—he won’t know, and he has no money to invest anyway. I don’t think spending half a dozen lifetimes rich will help at all with the problems of his original life, so many of which are caused by lack of money. And that does make it all pointless. I also can’t understand why Jeff never takes the opportunity to stay in college and switch majors and study other things. I understand that he doesn’t want to take the same courses over again, but he’s at an American university, he doesn’t appreciate the opportunities he has. (I could happily spend four years of far more lifetimes than he has taking random courses.) And then he’d have some more skills, or at least more information. I feel he wasted his opportunities. It’s a bit different for Pamela, who has done learned to paint and make movies. I think she’ll be better equipped to face the future.
Also, I think Grimwood underestimates how many books there are in the world, even written in English, never mind translations. And I think he neglects the possibilities of the rest of the world. Living in a different country for twenty-five years would have been worth trying if he wanted something different—actually, other countries are real, and interesting places, not just for exotic vacations for rich Americans.
Grimwood can’t have intended it, because of when the book was written, but this time I kept thinking how the world was about to change completely in 1989/90 from the Cold War world Jeff and Pamela knew, and whether whoever arranged the replaying did know that.
If it happened to me, I wouldn’t be able to win a penny on a single sporting event or horserace. It isn’t implausible that Jeff can—I’m sure lots of people can remember who won a Series or a Derby twenty-five years ago. But I have never paid any attention to any of this, and the comparable things I do know—what won the Hugo—aren’t the kinds of things people bet on.
This was written well before Groundhog Day (1993), and while there are definitely some similarities, there are also major differences—twenty-five years is a lot different from one day, in terms of how used you’d get to being able to have do-overs. One thing they both have in common is how they remind me of starting a computer game from a saved position—something that can’t really have influenced either of them. I wonder whether it influenced Kaleidoscope Century?
Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published eight novels, most recently Half a Crown and Lifelode, and two poetry collections. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.
I like this article, but disagree on one point: I think he has learned quite a bit from the additional lifetimes.
The lifetime he spends as a farmer shows that he has certainly gained in wisdom. He could make the money again, he could try to change the world again – and he doesn’t. He just wants to live his life and see things grow and wither in the cycle of time.
As he moves forward to live the rest of his life, he won’t have the advantages of knowing the future any more, but he has gained the wisdom of knowing that all of the other paths he went down were fruitless, and the best he can do is “cultivate his own garden”, in Voltaire’s sense.
I thought that the iterations of the lives he lives were Grimwood’s way of saying, “And this, and this, and this – and it means nothing.” The only thing that ever made a real difference was a person – Pamela.
I am inclined to agree with tbrookside. I think that Jeff gained a lot of wisdom in all of his replays. If you are going to have a “good” life, you need to know yourself, i.e. what will and won’t make you happy. His first replay pretty much showed that tons of money doesn’t guarantee a happy life, hence his second replay with all the drugs…
I would say that he became close to two people, Pamela and his daughter in the first replay. They were important, nothing else.
Also, the coming fall of the wall and end of the Soviet Union is an interesting point. The world changed quite a bit in a short time. In the grand scheme of things, I am not sure that would matter to a 40-something man in America.
Thanks for the spoiler warning! I carefully skipped the rest of the post and am not reading the comments, but I wanted to say this does sound interesting and I’ll look for it sometime (and come back and read the rest of this post then).
I read it quite a few years ago, and mainly remember thinking, “Bummer — he doesn’t get to keep any of it.” Now, I think I see it just the way you do: get out there and learn things, live life in a different way, get MORE out of life.
I might not, of course. I mean, I don’t do that, do I?
I love “Replay.” Thanks for blogging it.
I think both Jo and tbrookside are right. On the one hand, tbrookside is right that the hero is far wiser after his experience than he was before.
On the other hand, he could’ve used his time as a Replayer learning things that would be useful from one life to the next, studying medicine, law, and other practical skills, as well as art and music. That’s pretty much what Bill Murray did in Groundhog Day. Which I also love.
If the life as a farmer had been his last life, maybe I’d believe he’d found wisdom. But he went on from there when he found Pamela and lived several more lives, all of them as a rich person, including the one where they screw up the world. (And even as a farmer he was rich enough to buy privacy and remoteness.) I think he did know himself, I’m dubious whether that’s going to be any use.
I remember being impressed with how Jeff made a complete hash of re-meeting “his wife” in the first replay, though it is a long time since I read it so some details might be hazy. As I recall, he was happily married in his first life, and he knew this woman loved him deeply. In his replay he approached the young girl who he knew would become his wife, but early and, fatally, in a cocky and cack-handed fashion; she took against him, and her brothers did too, and no amount of him saying “but I really know that you really are the one” obviously couldn’t convince her – he just came over as a creep and a deranged proto-stalker.
So it’s not that there’s a Mr or Miss Right out there waiting, there are timing and attitude issues too (and lots more besides).
Jo said:
I forgot about the last couple replays, weren’t they living on a sailboat drinking cocktails all day long? That does color my opinion a bit :)
I also forgot to mention that I completely agree with Jo’s idea of taking more classes, as a college professor who wishes he had more time to take more classes, I can completely identify with doing a couple of different degrees just for the knowledge. But, I suspect people who think like that are a very distinct minority in this world :)
This is an absolutely stunning and brilliantly written book. Why do I know nothing about the author or any other works by him?
The criticism of Jeff for not doing more with his life during replays is reasonable, but the answer lies in understanding his character. He’s not an intellectual, like most of us, and basking in the extra time to increase his knowledge is not for him. What he’s trying to do is find out how to live his life, and the fact that he does this roughly within the possible parameters of his original life doesn’t negate the questing he’s doing within those parameters.
Yeah, but you’d know to buy IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Google — and Berkshire Hathaway, for that matter. Just because you can’t bet to get a grubstake doesn’t mean you have to stay rat poor. You could buy Bell Telephone before the split, and get a lot of stock with minimal effort.
Just paying attention to the world we live in would be a help toward reasonable wealth in a repeat.
Love this novel. Found it late unfortunately, but Grimwood has probably woken up in 1963 and is enjoying his second life.
Anybody else who read this book get the sensation of going down a drain?
Funny, but I had Replay– like fantasies long before I ever found the book…and my take on the 2nd chance was focused more on things that I would have improved about myself at a young age more than actions I might have taken to gain wealth with the knowledge of future events. But a couple of boxes of Micheal Jordan rookie cards wouldn’t hurt a thing either, would they? At any rate, I think it was a masterful work by Mr. Grimwood; I wish I still had my copy, but I gave it away, thinking that 3 or 4 reads was enough. If I only had that day back……(^8}
It’s a brilliant book on several levels, with the rare quality of being able to continue to enchant (even haunt) those who enjoy re-reading it. I write “haunt” because the ending, while satisfying, is, much like Jeff’s replays, also heartbreaking.
The accumulated wisdom of his replays (punctuated with as much pain and loss as wealth) could make confronting his life choices that unfold in his unknown future all the more difficult. Pamela or Linda? Neither?
When Ken Grimwood died suddenly of a heart attack in 2003, he was working on a sequel to “Replay.” It’s sad that we’ll never get to read it. Hope Bob Zemeckis remains true to Grimwood’s spirit when he makes the movie.
We’re reading this for “book club”, a bunch of 50 year olds, older than the 20-45 lifespans of Jeff and Pamela. I think the young body would be quite a thrill, pushing one to do a lot of challenging physical experiences. I guess learning to fly gliders counts to some extent.
I didn’t understand why Jeff didn’t want to re-experience the daughter he loved, or redoing his first marriage better etc. (actually he did try that but only as an alternative somehow to Pam). He seemed to always want to try new things. The trying to change the world go was a bit of a downer. He always seems to muck it up somehow. It is never quite good enough. He needs to learn how to savor the moments.
Did anyone ever consider an anthology dealing with what various historical personages would have done given their time again? Say Hitler,Churchill, Trotsky, Lincoln all waking up on their 21st birthdays knowing the future.If various leaders could reign again,as it were-anticipate much shorter American civil war ,JFK not riding in an open car in Dallas,RFK watching the primary results on TV and Teddy sending Mary Jo home in a cab!