Rollback

Rollback by Robert J Sawyer is one of the first sci fi books I have read in a while. It's set in 2048 and follows a couple in their old age. Don and Sarah Halifax are celebrating their 60th anniversary when they get a phone call. It's a grad student calling to tell Sarah that there has been a response. You see, in 2009 Sarah was a member of SETI and they received a message from Sigma Draconis. Sarah decoded it and sent the official response. A dialog has been started.

The message back from the Draconians spurs the interest of a billionaire who feels that Sarah is key in decoding the second response, which has an additional layer of encryption. He offers her a new procedure, a rollback. The rollback is intended to rejuvenate the elderly and essentially de-ages people. It is incredibly expensive and only the richest of the rich can get the procedure. Sarah agrees on one condition: that Don can get one too. The billionaire reluctantly agrees.

The book then continues in a series of real-time events and flashbacks. We get to see Don and Sarah as their relationship grew. Soon we realize, however, that the rollback worked on Don, but not on Sarah. He becomes physically 25 and she remains 87. This is where the book splits into what are essentially two different sci fi stories that are interconnected.

The first follows Don. How does a man who is physically 25, but mentally almost 90 get by in the world? He has no employable skills as he has been retired for over 20 years and has a hard time even understanding youth culture. The second relates to the alien contact and decoding another message. Both are very interesting, but combined, they create one key flaw. The relationship between Don and Sarah that is so important to the book is sort of dropped temporarily and then picked up again later. I think I would have enjoyed it more if they had been separated chronologically in the book.

I really liked Sawyer's writing. It was very easy to care for the characters, they were some of the most relate-able I have read in recent memory. I also really enjoyed the inclusion real history, pop culture (duh), and products. This really helped to ground the story in reality. It was also quite Canadian, which I enjoy, even if I didn't understand all of the details (Who was the Prime Minister when you were born? Yeah, thought so).

All-in-all this was a very enjoyable book. One of the two story components had a very predictable ending and the other had quite a unique twist. I was able to finish it in just a little more than a week and occasionally had a hard time putting it down. Check this one out! You won't be disappointed.