{"id":13219,"date":"2020-01-02T18:08:51","date_gmt":"2020-01-02T23:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=13219"},"modified":"2020-01-02T18:08:51","modified_gmt":"2020-01-02T23:08:51","slug":"rewinder-by-brett-battles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=13219","title":{"rendered":"‘Rewinder,’ by Brett Battles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t read a lot of science fiction, <\/strong>but I got a deal on an SF book by Brett Battles, whose mysteries I\u2019ve enjoyed. So I gave it a shot. Rewinder <\/a><\/em>wasn\u2019t bad at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rewinder <\/em>is a time-travel story. It starts in an alternate universe where the United States never won its independence. Instead, our hero, Denny Younger, lives in a British empire in which society is intensely stratified. Born a lowly \u201cEight,\u201d Denny has little to look forward to in life beyond a manual factory job. However (to his father\u2019s alarm) he tests high in history. And the day after finishing high school, he finds himself taking the entry test for the Upjohn Institute. That enterprise ostensibly does historical research to verify the genealogy of upper-class individuals hoping for prestigious appointments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that, Denny learns, is only the public face of the\nthing. In fact, Upjohn employees are time travelers. They go back in time to\nobserve people\u2019s ancestors and learn their dirty secrets. They can then use\nthose secrets to blackmail their clients, bringing in government grants and\npreferential treatment for the corporation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But one of Denny\u2019s trainers, Marie, senses something\nuncommon in him. She gives him hints that she and (perhaps) some others are sometimes\ngoing beyond their instructions \u2013 \u201cdoing right\u201d rather than just \u201cdoing well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Denny makes a bumbling mistake and erases his own timeline\nentirely, replacing it with one that will be familiar to you and me, he will be\nfaced with a shattering decision \u2013 \u201cfix\u201d his mistake or choose a better world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rewinder <\/em>was a fun book. I\u2019ve done some time travel writing myself, and it makes my head hurt, so I can only imagine the kind of labor it must have taken to plot out the many paradoxes here. Science fiction fans, especially, will enjoy Rewinder<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t read a lot of science fiction, but I got a deal on an SF book by Brett Battles, whose mysteries I\u2019ve enjoyed. So I gave it a shot. Rewinder wasn\u2019t bad at all. Rewinder is a time-travel story. It starts in an alternate universe where the United States never won its independence. Instead, … Continue reading ‘Rewinder,’ by Brett Battles<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[390,2358],"class_list":["post-13219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-brett-battles","tag-rewinder"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}