Rewrite, by Gregory Benford

In his award-winning 1980 novel Timescape, Gregory Benford introduced a plausible means by which we might send signals to the past using faster-than-light particles.  In his new novel, Rewrite: Loops in the Timescape, he jettisons any semblance to hard science and spins a time-travel/reincarnation fantasy story.

When Charlie, middle-aged and burned out on life, is killed in a car accident, he wakes up on his sixteenth birthday in his 16-year-old body, but with all the memories of his middle-aged life.  It's a new start, and a chance to correct all the mistakes of the first time around.  It's a chance many of us, including, perhaps, septagenarian sci-fi writers.  "This is a chance to rewrite a previous draft of Opus Charlie.  And who in humanity wouldn't want that?"

Besides making changes in his personal and family life, Charlie decides that he is going to take advantage of his movie knowledge to establish himself in his new life.  He gets the rights to a new novel called The Godfather and recreates the movie.  He recruits an up-and-coming film maker named Spielberg.  He "anticipates" trends and makes a name for himself--and a good deal of money--as a very young man.  After he discovers that there are others like him, who have reincarnated into their younger selves, he produces the movie Back to the Future in hopes of drawing out other reincarnates.

Benford clearly had fun writing this book.  Charlie meets up with Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, and Albert Einstein, as well as the famous Casanova, all of whom are reincarnates.  On this point, I enjoyed some of the clever turns.  These visionaries of the future had actually been there!  As Albert Einstein said, "Those who ignore the mistakes of the future are bound to make them."  Now that's a good line! 

I was troubled by the lack of sense.  The whole reincarnation, life-cycling, multiple universe thing was played with but not scientifically explored, as I would have expected from Benford (and as he did in Timescapes).  Charlie gets into it and does his part to change some history, but Rewrite is ultimately unsatisfying.


Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!