{"id":19358,"date":"2024-02-21T20:33:38","date_gmt":"2024-02-22T01:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19358"},"modified":"2024-02-21T20:33:38","modified_gmt":"2024-02-22T01:33:38","slug":"do-overs-by-jon-spoelstra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19358","title":{"rendered":"‘Do-Overs,’ by Jon Spoelstra"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Time travel books<\/strong> form an interesting sub-genre of science fiction. Some writers like to play with the inherent paradoxes of the time-line \u2013 what happens if the hero kills his own grandfather? What happens if he meets himself? Suppose you killed Hitler as a baby \u2013 would fate provide a second-string substitute and history go on pretty much the same?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other time travel stories are more about memory and regret. That\u2019s the case with Jon Spoelstra\u2019s Do-Overs,<\/a><\/em> a book tailor-made to appeal to people of a certain age, who have life regrets. As a man who meets both criteria, I liked it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roy Hobbs (same name as the hero of The Natural<\/a><\/em>) used to be a Chicago news reporter. Then his ex-wife, whom he still cared for, fell victim to a vicious serial killer. Roy wrote a bestselling book about the murders. But he lost all the money he earned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now he\u2019s gotten an invitation from a reclusive billionaire, one of the old Silicon Valley computer moguls. He and a group of his fellow billionaires have pooled their resources on something like a privately funded Manhattan Project. Their purpose was to prove the existence of parallel universes. This, he says, they have accomplished. There are multitudes of parallel universes, mostly differing from one another only in minor details. By traveling between these universes, it\u2019s possible to move about in time \u2013 though never in our own universe; only in the others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What he wants from Roy, he says, is a book. A book only he himself will read. He wants the book to describe Roy\u2019s own subjective experiences in parallel universes, not the science. The payment will be princely. Roy sees no reason to refuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naturally, he travels to his own past. There, he observes himself meeting his wife for the first time. He is astonished at the sensation of seeing her, and falling in love again. But on another trip, as he\u2019s following her around, she notices him and makes an excuse to meet him. She feels, she tells him, a strange attraction to him (in spite of their near-thirty-year age difference). Apparently, Roy comes to believe, there\u2019s such a thing as a \u201ccosmic connection,\u201d which binds souls (or something) together, even across universes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enthused by this renewed passion, Roy makes up his mind to travel to many universes and stop the killer early in his career, saving his wife and as many women as possible. What he doesn\u2019t realize is that this cosmic connection connects more than love \u2013 he may have given the murderer the key to a longer, even bloodier career in countless iterations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do-Overs<\/em> was adequately written. The prose wasn\u2019t memorable, and there were occasional grammatical slips, as in when we\u2019re told a character \u201chad drank\u201d wine. The narrator also speaks of an \u201cuncompromising position\u201d when he means a \u201ccompromising position.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the storytelling was adequate, it kept my interest, and I cared about the characters. We\u2019ve all imagined going back and fixing our lives\u2019 mistakes. It was pleasant to follow a character doing just that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a little more sex than I thought necessary in this book, and it was just a tad more explicit than it had to be. Is it immoral to go to bed with a woman you just met, when she\u2019s been your wife already in another universe? Intriguing question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However that is, I found Do-Overs<\/em> quite a lot of fun. Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Time travel books form an interesting sub-genre of science fiction. Some writers like to play with the inherent paradoxes of the time-line \u2013 what happens if the hero kills his own grandfather? What happens if he meets himself? Suppose you killed Hitler as a baby \u2013 would fate provide a second-string substitute and history go … Continue reading ‘Do-Overs,’ by Jon Spoelstra<\/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":[5078,4188],"class_list":["post-19358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-do-overs","tag-jon-spoelstra"],"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\/19358","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=19358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19359,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19358\/revisions\/19359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}