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    Rollback: A Novel
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    Rollback: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Rollback: A Novel
    Ebook357 pages5 hours

    Rollback: A Novel

    By Robert J. Sawyer

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Exploring morals and ethics on both human and cosmic scales, Rollback is a new SF novel by Hugo and Nebula Award-winner Robert J. Sawyer.

    Dr. Sarah Halifax decoded the first-ever radio transmission received from aliens. Thirty-eight years later, a second message is received and Sarah, now 87, may hold the key to deciphering this one, too . . . if she lives long enough.

    A wealthy industrialist offers to pay for Sarah to have a rollback—a hugely expensive experimental rejuvenation procedure. She accepts on condition that Don, her husband of sixty years, gets a rollback, too. The process works for Don, making him physically twenty-five again. But in a tragic twist, the rollback fails for Sarah, leaving her in her eighties.

    While Don tries to deal with his newfound youth and the suddenly vast age gap between him and his wife, Sarah struggles to do again what she'd done once before: figure out what a signal from the stars contains.


    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateApr 3, 2007
    ISBN9781429952132
    Unavailable
    Rollback: A Novel
    Author

    Robert J. Sawyer

    Robert J. Sawyer is the author of Flashforward, winner of the Aurora Award and the basis for the hit ABC television series. He is also the author of the WWW series—Wake, Watch and Wonder—Hominids, Calculating God, Mindscan, and many other books. He has won the Hugo, Nebula and John W. Campbell Memorial awards—making him one of only seven writers in history to win all three of science-fiction’s top awards for best novel. He was born in Ottawa and lives in Mississauga, Ontario.

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    Reviews for Rollback

    3.5/5

    16 ratings15 reviews

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    • 4/5

      This was tough to review without spoilers, but I managed it :)

      Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer is, really, about family. The story couldn't be told without the science part of the fiction, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is central to the story, but even those elements are used to focus on what a family is, and what it means to be in a family.

      The story starts with our main character, Donald Halifax, lamenting his age. Right away, you get the clue that age will be involved in this story. His only claim to fame is reflected glory; his wife is slightly famous for having decoded the first message from an alien intelligence.

      Don tends to pontificate, and make Star Trek references. No, most people don't talk like that. But nerdy fannish types do. I've had conversations like he does with his wife, so they're believable to me. To a general audience, though, it may seem a bit tedious.

      I occasionally wanted to grab Don and shake him, but I can't fault the story for that - it made sense that he would make some less than stellar decisions. That they also moved the plot along was convenient, but didn't detract from the believability.

      The plot was good, but predictable. There were a couple unexpected twists, but for the most part, you'll see it all coming. The characters are good, but mostly just deep enough to serve their purpose in the story. I cared about Don and his family, but I don't feel particularly attached to them, either.

      The writing is good, and pretty engaging. It's an easy read, but only occasionally gripping. If you're looking for a fun read that'll make you think, this is a good option.
    • 5/5
      Oh, man. What a book.
    • 2/5
      Sawyer often has good ideas with trouble on the dismount. This is not that: a billionaire pays for the “rollback,” or return to youth, of an elderly woman and her husband because the woman was the one who decoded the first received alien message, and a reply has just come in needing new decryption. But the rollback works for the husband and not the wife, and so the husband promptly begins banging a grad student who reminds him of how his wife used to be before the years flew by. Oh, also there’s some alien signal stuff. Ugh.
    • 3/5
      I went through a Sawyer phase some time ago. I enjoyed his tales then but have changed my tastes quite a bit when it comes to sci-fi. His books are not hardcore on the science, though he certainly does his research. Because the book is older, it's a little dated. His concept is what it would be like to suddenly go from 80 to 25 again. He details all of the awkward and possibly unanticipated things that can happen. That's all interesting stuff but was hoping for more on the mysterious aliens and their message from space.
    • 3/5
      I really do like Mr Sawyer's books, but the 'formula' is getting tiresome. It's not a plot formula that leaves me weary - it's the pacing.

      I always think the premise sounds great. Always. I can't wait to start and the first part is great and fairly rips along, forcing me to spin through the pages. Then around the middle it all drops a gear and starts flagging as it reaches towards the conclusion. However, I plow on to the ending and it starts to pick up again, but only briefly because before I know it.....it's the end and I'm left thinking, "Hang on..Wait.... No. What?"

      Although the book -like his others - is deemed sci-fi, it's still within the realms of 'maybe that could happen' but the ending just left me with a WTH moment, which I also find is my common reaction to Mr Sawyer's books. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes not. This is a not so good moment.

      I wasn't fond of Don much either, which didn't help. I'm not saying I only like books featuring nice people but surely just because he ends up physically younger doesn't mean he's leaping in and out of bed with the first piece of baggage to flap her eyelashes at him. All the while his loving wife of umpteen years is sitting at home watching his dinner burn. It just doesn't make sense. His history with his wife must count for something and his mental age must mean he's got more sense. Maybe it's true what they say about guy's in that age group though and his brains were in his trousers.

      It sounds like I didn't like it, I know, but I did really. I'd even go so far as to say I'd recommend it. It's a quick and fairly gentle sci-fi read and the sort of book that you come away from thinking about how you would react in that situation. But go into it prepared for his usual pacing and 'out there' conclusion and you won't be disappointed.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed the concept discussed, how a rejuvenation technology would effect a relationship, and alien first contact through radio signals sent over generations. But I didn't really get a handle on the characters, there wasn't enough plot to get to know them, and what I did learn about them I didn't like but the concepts were cool.
    • 3/5
      Easy enough to read and kept my interest, but not memorable. The premise had some promise, but think the book started to come apart at the seams just a touch as some of the plot elements get harder and harder to swallow.
    • 4/5
      Rollback was an interesting and fun read, with good depth of characters.The science behind life prolongment takes a back seat to the moral and psychological impacts that this technology produces. The SETI back story provides added interest but with a somewhat incomplete feel.
    • 2/5
      The book started out with some promise with the plot of having received a follow-up SETI message. Unfortunately, it quickly turned south when the statement was made that "you've got a pen pal" and that the follow-up message was meant for Sarah and not for the civilization. How ridiculous.The story continued to unfold as more of a love story with Don (the spouse who aging "rollback" worked) falling for another woman.It then got almost laughable when it was determined that Sarah's survery )answers (out of 1000 random ones sent back on the initial SETI resposne) held the decryption key. Add to that the notion that 7-11 and other stores will be around in another 40 years and it becomes just too far fetched and totally non-believable. On the plus side, some good tech with regard to the datacom -- a logical extension of where cell phone technology will head in the future.
    • 4/5
      This is a story of aging, alien contact, and the common question of sci-fi: what does it mean to be human? I was somewhat saddened that the main character of the story turns out not to be the ground-breaking female scientist, but her "everyman" husband who is dealing with their experiences with the "rollback" process. I found myself frequently wondering what the story would be like told from her point of view -- I imagine it would be a very different book. (For one, it wouldn't have given the author as much excuse to expound upon science and humanity as much, since he often has her explaining things to her less-intelligent spouse.) Despite my desire to be reading a slightly different novel, I did find this a light, enjoyable read.A side note: A lot of this book's setting and flavour will be familiar to Canadians, particularly those around Toronto, or those who listen to a lot of CBC radio. For me, I found this really added to the story, as I could hear the voices in my head of the interviewers he mentioned and imagine the coverage the story would have gotten on our news.
    • 4/5
      A very good sci-fi story dealing with new ideas. The basic premise is that a female scientist in her 80s is needed to decrypt work that first began 40 or 50 years ago. Science has now progressed to give people additional years but a huge cost. Besides the fine storyline, this book deals with the ethics involved in making such decisions. Highly recommended
    • 5/5
      This book was a fun, easy read. Nominally sci-fi, it reads more like mainstream fiction. True, there are aliens, but they are 18.8 light years away. This book is about ethics. SETI finally recieved a radio message from the stars in 2009. Sarah was integral to decoding that message then, at age 49, and sending Earth's reply. Now in 2047, we've finally received a reply that nobody can figure out. Sarah, unfortunately, is in her late 80's now and knocking on death's door. But a super-rich SETI-lover wants to give her more time to work on decoding the message, so he pays billions of dollars for a procedure, a "rollback," that will make her physically 25 again. She insists that if she gets a rollback her octagenarian husband of sixty years, Don, receives one too. For Don the procedure works perfectly, he's 25 again, full of vim and vigor, but for Sarah the procedure fails, she's still 88, feeble and fading. Now what?The story is told almost entirely from Don's point of view. It's about moral quandaries. There's lots of stuff in here to make you think. What would you do if you were in that situation? An easy read, but deep and thought-provoking at the same time, I definitely enjoyed this book.Sarah comes off as a much stronger more tolerant woman than I am. I would've like to have some of the story told from her point of view. We hear what she has to say to her husband about the ethical dilemmas that arise, but what is she really thinking? There are two things that annoyed me about this book. The first was the familiarity with which the author dealt with pop topics. Maybe the author was just trying to emphasize when a section of the story was set in 2009 as opposed to being set in 2048 (lots of this story was told in flashbacks), but it seems to me that too many references to Seinfeld, Conan O'Brien, Blondie, Red Lobster and iPods is the kind of thing can date a novel and make it unreadable in the years to come when people no longer get the references. The other thing that annoyed me was the epilogue, set another twenty years in the future. It was totally unnecessary. It added nothing to and probably detracted from the story. I would much rather have had all of that left to the imagination, especially because I didn't like the way the author had it go. There is such a thing as too perfect.
    • 4/5
      More about moral and ethics than about science. Plenty of dilemma for readers to ponder. Lots of predictions about everyday life in the near future. A very fun read.
    • 4/5
      40 years ago mankind received it's first message from an alien civilization. The woman who decoded it and sent back the reply is now 80 years old. The alien's response has just been received. The story is told through the eyes of that woman's husband, who undergoes a rollback thanks to his wife's importance in decoding the alien's second message. A rollback is a treatment that turns back a person's biological clock to where they are 25 years old. This leads to a love triangle between the newly 25 year old, his wife of sixty years, and young woman who reminds him of his wife when he was young.The premise sounds predictable, but it is really handled well, deftly balancing between covering the effects the rollback on the protagonist, and decoding and understanding the alien's message by his wife. Well paced, entertaining, recommended.
    • 1/5
      I suppose if you are an Analog loving male geek with a penchant for late night dorm room discussions you might love this book. The premise is that a SETI scientist from Canada, Sarah Halifax, has decoded and answered an alien message from 18.8 light years away. The aliens have sent an encrypted reply and a wealthy roboticist and SETI enthusiast has paid for a hugely expensive rejuvenation effort for Sarah to live long enough to decode this message and the next one to come. Sarah insists that both she and her husband of sixty years, Don, be given the rejuvenation treatment. Because of Sarah's breast cancer treatments years earlier, the rejuvenation (rollback) only works on Don.Unfortunately as much as everyone in the book insists that Don is a "good guy", none of his meagre actions in this slim volume support this fact. His rejuvenation brings him the hormones and energy of a 25 year old. He attempts to get back his old job as audio engineer at the CBC and is angry when his ancient skill set is rejected. He sees no other options and goes home and sulks. He meets a younger SETI researcher and immediately falls into bed with her. He rails against his friends and family who barely recognize their grandfather and brother.The two women in the novel are both SETI researchers, but Sarah knows she has changed her answer to the questionnaire sent back to the aliens just before they were sent and takes months to use the revised answer as an decryption key. We find out next to nothing about Lenore except that she is good in bed, has red hair and freckles, and wants children with Don.The rest of the novel is a rehashing of every teenage question -- why are we here? are there multiple worlds? what would aliens want? without any decent answers. It is really appalling that this book made the Hugo nominations while many, many much better written and deeper philosophical novels did not.