310 pages
English language
Published Nov. 11, 1998 by Quill.
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?"
Very enjoyable story, but for me the ending was predictable. The last few chapters missed the excitement I felt with the previous ones.
Interesting and compelling sci-fi about a strange form of time travel.
DNF at 30%
This is going to be an odd comparison, but this book is, in many ways, the opposite of what Neuromancer did to the cyberpunk genre. Allow me to explain myself.
Neuromancer was a massively influential book that directly inspired some of the most memorable pieces of cyberpunk media, including The Matrix, Blade Runner, Cyberpunk 2077, and a host of anime and manga like Ghost in the Shell and Akira. What each of these works did was take some of the best parts of Neuromancer and implement them into their own stories to create a wonderful mural of complementary works that make the genre so incredible.
However, in my opinion, Replay was the rough draft of the "live your life over and make different choices" genre; not necessarily the prototype. Subsequent works that take this trope have vastly improved upon it rather than just doing something different with …
DNF at 30%
This is going to be an odd comparison, but this book is, in many ways, the opposite of what Neuromancer did to the cyberpunk genre. Allow me to explain myself.
Neuromancer was a massively influential book that directly inspired some of the most memorable pieces of cyberpunk media, including The Matrix, Blade Runner, Cyberpunk 2077, and a host of anime and manga like Ghost in the Shell and Akira. What each of these works did was take some of the best parts of Neuromancer and implement them into their own stories to create a wonderful mural of complementary works that make the genre so incredible.
However, in my opinion, Replay was the rough draft of the "live your life over and make different choices" genre; not necessarily the prototype. Subsequent works that take this trope have vastly improved upon it rather than just doing something different with it.
I have read The Midnight Library, Dark Matter, Recursion, and Version Control. I have seen Big, 13 Going on 30, and 17 Again. All of these works took the premise of Replay, put a spin on it, and did it better. So this leaves Replay to feel a bit basic when visiting it for the first time in 2022. While I feel unfair comparing Replay to works that came out many years after it, but I can't help but feel a bit bored as I read through this. It was probably interesting at the time, I don't think it has held up quite as well.
Now to be completely fair, I have not even reached the halfway point, so it's entirely possible that it does in fact improve and do something interesting to shake it up. But I don't have the patience to wait and see.
Thoughtful and unexpected, this story displays minimal stylistic flair from Grimwood, but considers a fascinating phenomenon from all angles and ends up with quite a lot to say.
Thankfully the blurb was misleading, this book isn't about a guy with a shitty life that gets a second chance and becomes rich and happy.
It's much better than that.
