Replay - The second game

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Replay - The second game (Original title: Replay ) is a 1986 published novel of American author Ken Grimwood .

Director Harold Ramis was inspired by Replay for his 1993 comedy And daily greets the marmot (orig .: Groundhog Day ), in which a weatherman portrayed by Bill Murray has to experience the same day over and over again.

Table of contents

The heart attack

At the age of 43, Jeff Winston had a heart attack and died. However, he comes to completely disoriented in his former student apartment. Jeff quickly finds out the unbelievable truth: after his death he was somehow catapulted back into his 18-year-old body in 1963, and no one except him knows what happened or how the next 25 years will go.
Intoxicated by this knowledge, he amassed a fortune, as he can make sure-footed sports betting and stock market speculations - but privately everything goes wrong, because he approaches his future wife too briskly, who therefore lets him down. So he marries someone else with whom he has a daughter. As the day of the heart attack approaches, Jeff undergoes a thorough examination and is declared healthy. But on the same day as the previous time, a heart attack knocks him down ... and Jeff comes to again at the age of 18 in 1963.

Repetition

Some things are different: he woke up a few hours later than the last time (although he is not yet aware of this), and although he is betting again, it is impossible to live his life the same as it was last time. For example, he doesn't get to know his wife and his daughter never existed ...
Jeff lived again and again until he was 43, suffers a heart attack and is thrown back to have to start all over again. His lives are always different; sometimes he tries to intervene in world events (he tries in vain to stop the assassination attempt on John F. Kennedy ); sometimes he withdraws into complete solitude; sometimes he is addicted to drugs. He has long since given up looking for an explanation for these repetitions.

Other

His view of the world shakes when he learns about a film in one of the reruns that causes a sensation and seems to move people very much, a film he has never heard of. He investigates the matter and finds out that the author of the film is going through the same thing as him - Pamela, too, repeats her life after a heart attack over and over again.
Together they go in search of others and experience the craziest situations, as they both notice that they come to later with each repetition. One day Jeff has to wait years until the young Pamela, whom he visits again and again, is taken over by her older self. Together they want to improve the world, but on the contrary, they bring it to the brink of World War 3 or come across a serial killer who is also stuck in a time warp until they finally decide to spend their new lives together and without contact with the outside world. But they are running out of time, because these new stages of life are getting shorter and shorter in great strides.

The end

Eventually Jeff suffers another heart attack and is thrown back by only a minute, has the heart attack again and again at ever shorter intervals until the world is nothing but a never-ending pain ... but suddenly it's all over, Jeff somehow has the magic hurdle and lived on as a 43-year-old. It is the same with Pamela, and the two find each other again - for the first time in a future they cannot foresee.

At that moment, somewhere in the world, another person is coming around in a much younger body after having a heart attack in 2017.

Awards

Individual evidence

  1. World Fantasy Award 1988: winners and nominees