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ROLLBACK (Mass Market Paperback)

by Robert J. Sawyer (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
RRP: £6.99
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Product details

  • Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Tor; Reprint edition (27 Feb 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0765349744
  • ISBN-13: 978-0765349743
  • Product Dimensions: 17 x 11.2 x 2.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 19,720 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #1 in  Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Authors, A-Z > S > Sawyer, Robert J.

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Product Description

Review
Praise for "Rollback":
"A novel to be savored by science-fiction and mainstream readers alike." --"Toronto"" Globe & Mail"
"This is what SF is supposed to be about: Discovery as carried out by real people. A joy to read; a superb novel." -- Jack McDevitt, author of "Odyssey"
" "
"Likeable characters facing big ethical dilemmas . . . [a] smoothly readable near-future SF novel." -"Publishers Weekly," starred review
"Sawyer's near-future speculative fiction reveals many advances in medicine and robotics. But it's the humanness of the closeness (and the distance) between Sarah and Don that makes "Rollback" an early candidate for sci-fi book of the year." -"Kansas City Star"


Synopsis
Accepting a rollback, an expensive, experimental rejuvenation procedure, for herself and her husband of sixty years in exchange for deciphering a message from aliens, Dr. Sarah Halifax is faced with a dilemma when the procedure works on her husband, making him physically twenty-five again, but not on her, leaving her in her eighties. Reprint.

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Customer Reviews

8 Reviews
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 (4)
4 star:
 (2)
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Mind and body , 8 April 2007
By Friederike Knabe (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Rollback (Sci Fi Essential Books) (Hardcover)
You have to be a certain age before you will consider whether you want to be young again and live your life again. Sarah and Don are octogenarians and, after a full and contented life with children and grandchildren, have options to change their lives that we rarely dream of. However, Sarah, Dr. Halifax, is not just anybody. She is a well-known scientist who, back in 2009, had deciphered the first message from Sigma Draconis, a star system some nineteen light years away from Earth. Now, thirty-eight years later, the response to Earth's message is received and nobody can break the encryption code. Can Sarah do it again and will she live long enough to make it happen?

Cody McGavin, chief of a robotics company and always on the lookout for new technological discoveries is one the richest people around. He is convinced that Sarah is vital to decoding the message now and also for future message exchanges with "her Dracon pen pal". It is 2048 and, thanks to a process of DNA resequencing and some other "tuck" jobs, it has become possible to literally roll back a person's biological body to the prime of their life, around age 25. The procedure is experimental and only for the super-rich, like McGavin himself. He is willing to pay for Sarah to have this chance at another lifespan. It's not something she accepts lightly, insisting that her husband of 60 years, Don, is included in the offer. They both undergo the procedure which is successful for Don but not for her.

While in Sawyer's previous bestseller, Mindscan, life could be extended thanks to copying a complete brain map onto the bionic body, in Rollback advances in medicine are the solution. Here the ethical question is not so much who is the real person, but how do you harmonize an octogenarian brain with a 25-year old physique? Can you relive your life without stumbling over history? How do grandchildren deal with a grandfather who is much younger than their own parents? How do friends and former colleagues react? And, above all, how does this gap influence the relationship between husband and wife? Can it survive at all?

Leave it to Robert Sawyer to pack his speculative fiction with deep philosophical questions and topics for debate. Rejuvenation is but one of these. If humans can recreate themselves to live, maybe forever, are humans in fact playing God? How do people and societies cope with that? Cosmic communication is another major theme. The first message that Sarah had decoded was in effect a detailed questionnaire about Earth's peoples' perspectives on life and society. Why do they want to know? What do you tell aliens about human society? Do you tell the truth or do you present Earth in the best light possible? How to answer moral and philosophical conundrums? The range of the Dracons' questions probe deeply into the human psyche, testing its integrity.

The narrative moves between timelines of 2048, to previous milestones in the couple's life, mostly through Don's pondering his memories. There was Sarah's work with the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) project that led to the first transmission from Earth into the universe. Her discovery of the code that deciphered the Sigma Draconis message and the complex organization of the reply. Don, a TV and radio producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), was a good and patient dialogue partner for his wife. Through their conversations, played back in Don's mind, the reader can follow multiple strands of arguments about the worth of SETI, astronomy, genetics and more.

Sawyer has referred to Rollback as a "phi-fi" novel - a philosophical novel. The book's events are strongly anchored in current scientific knowledge. It speculates on possible future scenarios in fields like medicine and inter-stellar communication. Yet, this is also very much a human interest story. Sawyer has created memorable characters and realistic environments in which their lives unfold. It will fascinate the fan of Sawyer's sci-fi books as much as the general reader who is interested in a well written story that raises questions some of which we might pose ourselves already today. [Friederike Knabe]
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Biological time machine, 30 April 2007
By Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Rollback (Sci Fi Essential Books) (Hardcover)
One of science's more frustrating endeavours has been the quest to find other intelligent species. Dolphins and whales communicate with squeaks, while chimpanzees and orang utans use tools for various purposes - usually dinner. This is doubly tantalising - humans aren't all that unique, but neither of these lifeforms offers much in the way of philosophical dialogue. The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence was founded a half-century ago to search elsewhere for somebody to talk to. The search was among the stars.

In this well-conceived and executed tale, Robert J. Sawyer has speculated on the possible results of "listening in" on the Cosmos. A major problem in interstellar communication is that distance equals time. If a planet circling a star 18.8 light years distant wants to chat, it's 37.6 years between responses. SETI had triggered a "first contact" which was translated by Canadian astronomer Sarah Halifax and a reply transmitted. Now, nearly four decades later, whoever lives near Sigma Draconis has answered back. For some reason, the "Dracons" have encrypted the message. Sarah is in her eighties, yet it's clear that she's the best candidate to deal with the new message. At her age can she cope with the intense labour involved in the exercise?

Help is at hand from the science studying aging. An entrepreneur interested in SETI has agreed to fund the means to extend Sarah's life so that she can work on the encrypted message. Sarah, and her husband Don will have their aged bodies "rolled back" to a more youthful physical age. It's like starting life over with almost endless possibilities. The "rollback" process, though tried on only a couple of hundred people, is "foolproof". But while it works on Don, it fails on the person needing it most - Sarah.

Sawyer examines the many practical and philosophical issues surrounding the possibility of extended life. The first, and most obvious, is where Don's restored libido might lead him. Another aspect is the realisation that age may bring wisdom, but what is its worth in terms of employability. Moore's Law says computer power will double every 18 months. Translate that into terms a man retired for twenty years confronts when he seeks a job. Rollback is an expensive process - not everybody can afford it. How does a man deal with his children who are "older" than he and that he's certain to outlive? These are the types of questions Sawyer has a superlative talent in posing and addressing. His ability to develop real characters who must deal with such issues is without peer. Underlying these capabilities is a firm foundation in the relevant sciences. "Rollback" may be speculative, but only in the narrowest definition of the term. Sawyer didn't place this story only a generation in the future just to avoid extravagant surroundings. The science he depicts is almost there. Only the Dracons are missing . . . [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

For nit-pickers: The question of how Don's brain, which has been adjusting to his advancing years, would react to the sudden reversal of the remainder of the body's effective age to 25. Whatever the results to his libido, there's as good an argument for his going insane as there is for Sawyer's scenario of the resetting of his chronological clock. Yet another philosophical question raised by this excellent author. - sah
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking , 6 Jan 2008
By Koolfish (Singapore) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Rollback (Sci Fi Essential Books) (Hardcover)
This is very readable even for a non si-fi fan. The thought provoking Story unfolds along two timelines, ensuring you read "just one more chapter". Sawjer is not only a great visionary and futurist, but a superb story teller.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating idea let down by poor characterization
Like all great science fiction, this novel has a fascinating idea at its core: the possibility of turning back a body clock and restoring someone to physical youth (age 25) while... Read more
Published 2 months ago by K. Hickman

4.0 out of 5 stars new life crisis
a new novel from science fiction writer robert j sawyer. his books usually are near future set and feature characters going through life changes against a background of cutting... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Paul Tapner

3.0 out of 5 stars Mediocre
Sawyer's continuing presence on award shortlists is a mystery to me. His Hominids is possibly the worst book ever to win the Hugo (and yes, I have read They'd Rather Be Right);... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Nicholas Whyte

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Scenario
Sarah Halifax has the knack of de-coding Alien transmissions, but since those transmissions are 38 years apart she goes through an age rejuvenation program known as ROLLBACK... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Mr. John Frank Herbert

5.0 out of 5 stars Very readable
Sad, funny, serious all in one. Quite a clever story about getting old and how society treats you. Like all of Sawyers books, the science is fascinating and the information... Read more
Published 15 months ago by PJ Online

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