Rollback by Robert J Sawyer

Sarah and Don Halifax are the main ingredients to Rollback a Science Fiction novel by Robert J. Sawyer. When we first meet them they are celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary, both are in their 80's. Rollback isn't a very long book to read and its tone and state are generally quick and easy to understand and get through. As we proceed through Rollback Mr. Sawyer does a pretty good job in expressing the aged married couple.We soon learn that there is something pretty special about Sarah, Don's beloved wife, in that she is a scientist who worked closely with SETI (The Alien Seeking Governmental Agency) and decodes the very first message sent to us by aliens about 30 years ago. Well after sending back a reply (30 years ago) a return message from the aliens arrives and Sarah and Don are given a chance to "Rollback" their elderly state. A wealthy industrial Billionaire, Cody McGavin, is putting up what the book states is over a billion dollars for Sarah Halifax to be Rolled B
ack, in other words her DNA is Scrubbed and Shined and a Rollback occurs by degrees making the person young again. In the book Sarah demands that her husband Don must be Rolled Back as well and this is agreed to by Mr. McGavin, who of course has had his own Rollback, even though it is stated that he was in his late 40's or early 50's when he did so. The reasoning for Mr. McGavin's very generous offer is that he believes that Sarah can decipher the alien's message and he further believes that he can profit from it.At any rate the rollbacks are completed on Sarah and Don and something does indeed go wrong. The procedure doesn't work for Sarah. She continues to be old as Don gets younger and younger which is the crux of Mr. Sawyers tale. In fact the whole book is really about Don more than anything else as he grows to accept that his very loved wife (the one who the rollback was for) is going to die leaving him young and lonely! Not a bad premise. Unfortunately Mr. Sawyer does
slip up a bit in my view in that I doubt highly that a billionaire would just give anyone these expensive treatments, the reasons, the deciphering of the new alien transmission just isn't good enough reason for me to believe that the Industrialist would do so. I mean if say, Barack Obama were 99 years old and with cancer and ready for his final fling then yeah, I could see a Bill Gates stepping in and becoming a hero, but this gift from Mr. McGavin seems fanciful and he actually agrees rather quickly to do the same for Don! In about 3 minutes at the cost of a billion dollars! I just don't think billionaires are that nice!Yet I'm surely not dismissing the work done here as Don does carry the book. He's a good guy of that there is no doubt as Mr. Sawyer shows us the typical good guy demeanor of the Male Mammal. Don's emotions and feelings for Sarah are pretty touching at times and luckily Mr. Sawyer doesn't go for the syrup too often, after all this is sci-fi, which concerns t
he alien message. Still Rollback is set within the near future and it's interesting to have Mr. Sawyer bring up a time and place in which I myself was old enough to remember, he mentions the 80's through Don. Don does indeed have an affair with a young colleague of Sarah's, Leonore who is in her 20's... I won't divulge too much more. This is pretty lite reading though and isn't going to keep you up all night, but I felt that Mr. Sawyer has a pretty good touch with these characters, although I felt that the depth of the piece was not what it should be.Decisions made to quickly litter the book a bit too much. Rollback is a brief novel a little over 300 pages and somewhat fanciful. I can see some people feeling pretty good about this book but I doubt that many will consider it a lasting testament to the cannon of Science Fiction.

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