# Ken Grimwood's novel "Replay". \[OPEN SPOILERS\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 9, 2014, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ken-grimwoods-novel-replay-open-spoilers/695183 "2014-08-09T20:08:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Fiveroptic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiveroptic/32/8257_2.png) [@Fiveroptic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiveroptic)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2014, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ken-grimwoods-novel-replay-open-spoilers/695183/21 "2014-08-13T01:43:00Z")
I read “Replay” while recuperating from surgery in 1990. I read it again in 1995 while recuperating from surgery to correct the first surgery. I love this book. But I really hope I never read it again. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2014, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ken-grimwoods-novel-replay-open-spoilers/695183/22 "2014-08-13T01:47:12Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > An explanation would ruin it; one of the joys of the book is that no explanation is attempted. It happened and that’s all you need to know. There’s no need to explain a thing. Kind of like _Groundhog Day_, actually. _Why_ Phil is living the same day over and over again is almost beside the point. Some of my other favorite time travel stories, since **Ann Hedonia** got the ball rolling: _Elleander Morning_ by Jerry Yulsman _Imzadi_ by Peter David _11/22/63_ by Stephen King _The Time Traveler’s Wife_ by Audrey Niffenegger “—All You Zombies—” by Robert Heinlein (short story) “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury (short story) ---
**Author:** ![Scougs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scougs/32/3158_2.png) [@Scougs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scougs)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2014, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ken-grimwoods-novel-replay-open-spoilers/695183/23 "2014-08-13T14:32:33Z")
> [@MLS](#): > > Just stopping Oswald made no difference at all. When he later tried to make changes to improve the world – when they hooked up with the government after the public reveal – it only made things worse. It made me wonder about all the speculations about what would happen if you went back and killed Hitler as a child. The assumption usually is that the horrors of Nazi Germany would not have happened. But what if, instead, someone with the same ideas (and there certainly were others) took power but he was also an excellent military strategist who listened to his generals? Read “Making History” by Stephen Fry. ---
**Author:** ![BubbaDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bubbadog/32/333_2.png) [@BubbaDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BubbaDog)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2014, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ken-grimwoods-novel-replay-open-spoilers/695183/24 "2014-08-13T15:17:33Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > …Why only three people replay? Maybe I misinterpreted one element. I’m trying to remember it. But didn’t Jeff Winston once get an anonymous reply when he was “fishing” for others via newspaper ads; a reply that stated something like “Not Yet”. I thought that meant that there was another who may have understood more about the situation. Or maybe it was a foreshadow of the unstable replayer, I don’t know. But I took it as a message from some other “replayer” who may have already completed his replays and recognizes the ads for what they really were. If so, it would have been a great setup for a sequel. Introduce a new character who could spot and assist (or hinder or annoy) others within their replays. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2014, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ken-grimwoods-novel-replay-open-spoilers/695183/25 "2014-08-13T16:47:59Z")
Yes, I remember that point. It was a fourth replayer who chose not to get involved, not the mentally ill one. My take is that there were probably others who either didn’t read the ad, or simply chose not to reveal themselves. Are we a part of somebody else’s replay? Maybe in some other version of “now” there was no 9/11, but instead a dirty bomb smuggled in. The possibilities are endless. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2014, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ken-grimwoods-novel-replay-open-spoilers/695183/26 "2014-08-13T18:03:44Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > An explanation would ruin it; one of the joys of the book is that no explanation is attempted. It happened and that’s all you need to know. There’s no need to explain a thing. I never said it was a bad book without an explanation. I love the book. But I disagree it would be ruined with even a partial explanation. Is Star Trek ruined when you know why the events in “Cause and Effect” happened, or “Parallels”? Of course not. But it’s more of a _Twilight Zone_ episode than science fiction. No one wonders why things happen in the TZ, but then, they are only half-hour episodes. They’re over before you even have time to wonder. In some episodes, the TZ seems to be a place that hands out cosmic justice. No one knows how to stop the gods from punishing us - it just happens. This is the world of _Replay_. In _Replay_, why are only 3 (or 4; I think I thought the “not yet” came from the crazy guy, the one who wants to do the ‘appeasement’.) replayers at a time? Can replay events overlap? What happens if you die during a replay event? What happens if one of the other replayers dies? How do we become replayers? How do we \*avoid \*becoming replayers? Can events be changed? (apparently, they can, except for preventing JFKs assassination. Jeff should have tried again. Myself, I think that was a case of the author trying to have it both ways.) More importantly, _should_ they be changed? What happens to all the different people who lived or died during the replay events that did the opposite, or didn’t do either, in the “normal” timeline? Are Jeff and Pamela the largest mass murderers in history? If the novel is going to hint at answers, it shouldn’t back away at the end. Maybe it’s just the engineer in me, but the author is god of his worlds. If the author sets the characters on a path of discovery (Jeff experimenting with the limits of his world, not just by JFK, but gambling into riches, and changing his life path with his HS girlfriend, and the ill-fated events of him and Pamela working with the government), I think it is bad form to bail later in the book and ignore some of the questions his _own characters_ raise. The novel is really a human interest story wrapped in a sci fi setting. Like _The Time Traveler’s Wife_, it is about the people. And that’s fine! But even TTTW has a scientific explanation. I enjoy Groundhog Day immensely as well, but it is the same thing. Why is Phil being singled out for punishment? He’s not even the biggest jerk in the film (that’d be Ned\*, but Larry is up in the running, too. And Rita’s no peach herself.). You can’t even escape by dying. Talk about hell! \*especially if you buy into the view that Ned is the evil force behind Phil repeating the day. How does Phil escape? By buying a shit-ton of insurance! Bing! ---
**Author:** ![Charley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/97f17d/32.png) [@Charley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charley)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2014, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ken-grimwoods-novel-replay-open-spoilers/695183/27 "2014-08-17T09:49:24Z")
It’s absolutely my favourite book, I reread it probably twice a year and have done since I encountered it in the late 80s. Like another couple of people mentioned, I never come across it in the wild, although it comes up on here quite often. I’ve also given copies to several friends, but mostly I’m terribly protective of it. it feels like my book! ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2014, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ken-grimwoods-novel-replay-open-spoilers/695183/28 "2014-08-17T10:16:38Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > I never said it was a bad book without an explanation. I love the book. But I disagree it would be ruined with even a partial explanation. Is Star Trek ruined when you know why the events in “Cause and Effect” happened, or “Parallels”? Of course not. > > But it’s more of a _Twilight Zone_ episode than science fiction. No one wonders why things happen in the TZ, but then, they are only half-hour episodes. They’re over before you even have time to wonder. In some episodes, the TZ seems to be a place that hands out cosmic justice. No one knows how to stop the gods from punishing us - it just happens. This is the world of _Replay_. It wouldn’t have ruined the story, but the time travel is more of a prop than the point of the story, which is to explore the “what would you do if you could do it all over again?” question. Grimwood actually seems to want to get the geopolitics out of the way by having the characters keep on ending up in a bad place when they try to change things. Which causes them to not want to do that. Replay is a lot like the movie Frequency in that respect. Time travel may be a hook that draws in a lot of fans, but the point of the story is something else entirely. That’s what makes Replay(and Frequency) so good and why they stand out from the zillions of time travel stories out there. It could also be that explanations would have been saved for sequels, as well as the answers to your other questions. > [@](#): > > Can events be changed? (apparently, they can, except for preventing JFKs assassination JFK’s assassination could have been prevented, he just found that he couldn’t do it just by stopping Oswald. I’m not sure of the exact timeline, but I only think he had one shot at JFK because each replay brought his starting point forward. > [@](#): > > If the novel is going to hint at answers, it shouldn’t back away at the end. Maybe it’s just the engineer in me, but the author is god of his worlds. If the author sets the characters on a path of discovery (Jeff experimenting with the limits of his world, not just by JFK, but gambling into riches, and changing his life path with his HS girlfriend, and the ill-fated events of him and Pamela working with the government), I think it is bad form to bail later in the book and ignore some of the questions his _own characters_ raise. Some writers, rather than give you the answers, just like to raise the questions and let the reader use his or her imagination. That being said, all my questions were answered except for the science around the replaying. If it ever happens to you, there are many paths you can take. I think Grimwood’s “answer” is that the only one that really ends up mattering is your relationships with people. Although even that answer is a little dissatisfying because he seems to imply that the ones Jeff had in previous replays were meaningless because they only exist in Jeff’s experience once a new timeline starts. It’s gotta be tough having kids that just never existed because the slate got wiped clean. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2014, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ken-grimwoods-novel-replay-open-spoilers/695183/29 "2014-08-17T14:56:00Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > It’s gotta be tough having kids that just never existed because the slate got wiped clean. I’m a lot more bugged by that effect of time travel stories then a lot of viewers are, I’ll bet. I always worry about the innumerable people whose whole lives are simply background for the main character’s story. For example, in the ST:TNG episode “Tapestry”, Q shows Picard what his life would have been like if he’d made one decision differently. His entire life is changed - he’s no longer captain, primarily. Given Q’s abilities, I believe the entire universe “re-ran” all the way from that day with the Nossicans until the present. So, what about all those people who lived who hadn’t before, those who died who hadn’t before? What about the guy who _was_ captain? They “lived” every minute of their whole lives, suffered countless pains, experienced moments of pure joy, endured thousands of day of boredom, lived, loved and died, only to have it wiped away in a wink, just to prove a point. Didn’t their lives count for anything? Do they even have meaning? It’s even worse with ones like “All Good Things…” and _ST First Contact_. Entire _civilizations_ were gone in those examples. Trillions of lives altered. And none of them would ever know. Uncountable numbers of people who lived entire lives - birth, school, work, death - who likely don’t even exist in the “real” timeline. Where do they go? Talk about ‘all you zombies’! What if _we_ were the people in the altered timeline? In the “real” timeline, I might not exist. I’m just biding my time until the reset. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2014, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ken-grimwoods-novel-replay-open-spoilers/695183/30 "2014-08-17T17:24:04Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > I never said it was a bad book without an explanation. I love the book. But I disagree it would be ruined with even a partial explanation. But any explanation would be irrelevant to the story and would add technobabble for technobabble sake. The entire book is about what happened and how that affected the character; no explanation could improve on that and it certainly could have trivialized everything. Best time travel books and stories: **The Man Who Folded Himself** by David Gerrold " . . . And It Comes Out Here" by Lester Del Rey **Millennium** by John Varley **Kindred** by Octavia Butler **No Enemy But Time** by Michael Bishop **The Anubis Gates** by Tim Powers ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2014, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ken-grimwoods-novel-replay-open-spoilers/695183/31 "2014-08-18T03:16:39Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > …For example, in the ST:TNG episode “Tapestry”, Q shows Picard what his life would have been like if he’d made one decision differently. His entire life is changed - he’s no longer captain, primarily. Given Q’s abilities, I believe the entire universe “re-ran” all the way from that day with the Nossicans until the present… Good episode. But a nitpick - they’re Nausicaans: [Nausicaan | Memory Alpha | Fandom](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Nausicaan) > [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > …Talk about ‘all you zombies’! What if _we_ were the people in the altered timeline? In the “real” timeline, I might not exist. I’m just biding my time until the reset. In Ward Moore’s pretty good 1953 alt-hist novel _Bring the Jubilee_, that’s exactly what happens. In the original timeline, the Confederacy won the Civil War and the U.S. is reduced to a backwater on the borders of a thriving CSA. Then a historian travels back in time to observe the Battle of Gettysburg, but inadvertently changes how the battle unfolds. Meade wins, Lee is defeated, the U.S. wins the war, and the historian finds himself living in the altered timeline - what we consider the “real” one. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2014, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ken-grimwoods-novel-replay-open-spoilers/695183/32 "2014-08-18T03:20:03Z")
_Replay_ was featured on NPR’s “You Must Read This” in 2008, BTW: [In 'Replay,' A Life Full Of Second Chances : NPR](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92131281) ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ken-grimwoods-novel-replay-open-spoilers/695183/33 "2014-08-25T17:11:04Z")
Great book. I read Replay years ago, likely while I was in the homeless shelter. Not much to do there during the day but read and they had a book borrowing deal with the local library system. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ken-grimwoods-novel-replay-open-spoilers/695183.md?page=1)