Ken Grimwood
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Kenneth Milton Grimwood (February 27, 1944 - June 6, 2003) was an American author who was born in Pensacola, Florida. In his fantasy fiction Grimwood combined themes of life-affirmation and hope with metaphysical concepts, themes found in his best-known novel, the highly popular Replay.
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[edit] Early life
His sister, Teresa Panther-Yates, once described him as "a brilliant, beautiful human being who knew that the best of fiction has a message." On New Year's Day, 2006, she recalled their youth:
- I have done our genealogy and our ancestry was largely French with some Cherokee. I have fond memories of our days in rural Alabama on the farm with our grandparents. It would read like a Mark Twain novel. Ken had a smile that would fill up a room. His first short story (at the age of four) was about a cat the size of a roach. I thought we would burn the house down several times over when we were young (well... he was old enough to know better) with his chemistry set. We nearly did once for real when we decided to have a fire in the fireplace (Ken was about 18 and I was about nine), and he forgot to open the flue. We dragged around on the floor underneath the smoke until he remembered what to do. My mother (Nina Newberry... also deceased) never knew this, nor did my father (living). He brought a bat home once (he was about 15) and laughed hysterically as my mother went shrieking through the house.
Grimwood took an interest in EC Comics and radio journalism while growing up in Pensacola. In the early to mid-1960s, he worked in news at WLAK in Lakeland, Florida. Heading north, he studied psychology at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he contributed short fiction to Bard's student publication, Observer in 1969.
Some of his early novels were written while he was the news director at KNX 10.70 Newsradio in Los Angeles, but the success of Replay enabled him to leave KNX for full-time writing. He wrote under both his own name and several pseudonyms, including Alan Cochran.
Married once with no children, Grimwood had friends on both coasts, including Tom Atwill, who is related to the actor Lionel Atwill. Atwill described his friend's "free spirit lifestyle" and recalled, "He was a loner, almost a recluse. He liked small gatherings of friends. We had many dinner parties with him and some friends, and he would always be the one to keep the evening hilarious; he was a great storyteller. He did not like publicity and was actually quite shy... He was a media junkie. He owned the first BetaMax sold; he had the largest video library I've ever seen. One of his favorite things to do was for he and I to watch some old movie in the afternoon; we did it often."
[edit] Breakthrough
Grimwood's impressive debut novel, Breakthrough (Ballantine, 1976), was heavily influenced by EC Comics, concluding its blend of science fiction, reincarnation and horror elements with a surprising and unpredictable twist ending. Cured of epilepsy by a breakthrough in medical technology, 26-year-old Elizabeth Austin has miniature electrodes implanted in her brain. She can control her seizures by pressing an external remote to activate the electrodes. Adjusting to a normal life, she is ready to patch up a troubled marriage and resume her abandoned career. However, as part of the implant operation, Elizabeth gave her consent for the insertion of extra electrodes, featuring experimental functions unknown to science. When one of those electrodes is stimulated, Elizabeth experiences memories which are not her own. She discovers the remote has given her the ability to eavesdrop on her previous life 200 years in the past, and she keeps this a secret from her doctor. Intrigued, she finds the earlier existence appealing and begins to spend more and more time there. Eventually, she discovers that the woman in the past is a murderer who is plotting to kill Elizabeth's husband in the present.
Although Breakthrough went out of print shortly after publication, author Gary Carden ranked it alongside books by Stephen King and Ray Bradbury:
- Over the last 40 years, there are 40 or 50 "good trash" books that have remained in my memory because the writing was graphic, suspenseful and tense. Like the clichéd blurb on the cover of most suspense or crime fiction always promises, I found I "could not put it down." A lot of these managed to frighten me, and that is a pretty good trick. When I read Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, I actually turned on all of the lights, locked the door and finished the book before sunrise. The same thing is true of Stephen King’s Salem's Lot. I read it in a motel in Maggie Valley and ended up finishing it in the lobby where I had the comforting presence of other people. I’ll not forget James Hall’s Bone of Coral or James Lee Burke’s Black Cherry Blues or Ray Bradbury’s October Country. Then there was a book by Ken Grimwood called Breakthrough and William Goldman’s Marathon Man. All of these authors have the ability to "set the hook" in the first page, and then you are there for the long haul, reading as you eat, neglecting the chores and refusing to answer the phone. You aren’t reading Kafka or Tolstoy, and you know it, yet you know the author is far better than most writers of popular "thriller" or "suspense" fiction. Sometimes, he gets pretty close to "literature," but essentially, he is just entertaining you.
To write this novel, Grimwood did extensive research into brain surgery and epilepsy. Film producer William Castle took an interest in adapting Breakthrough for a movie, but the project was never realized. Breakthrough has certain parallels with David Williams' Second Sight (Simon and Schuster, 1977), coincidentally written the same year and later adapted for the TV movie, The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan (1979). Williams has commented, "As the author of Second Sight, I have to tell you that until I read this Wikipedia page in 2004, I had never heard of Ken Grimwood or his novel Breakthrough."
[edit] Two Plus Two
Grimwood used the pseudonym Alan Cochran on his novel Two Plus Two (Doubleday, 1980), but he offered a clue to the true author in Replay -- a sequence in which the main character hides his identity by using the name Alan Cochran. Behind Doubleday's cover blurb, "A Terrifying Novel of Murder in a Swinging Social Club," the storyline follows two Los Angeles detectives investigating a trio of murders. Doubleday described the book with this summary:
- For anyone who has never been to a swinging couples-only club, Two Plus Two will offer some surprises; and surprises were certainly in store for detectives Jason Price and his attractive partner, Brooke Merritt. Three seemingly unrelated murders have occurred in the Los Angeles area and the police have only a single lead — each of the victims, one male and two females, were members of the exclusive Two Plus Two club. To investigate, Lieutenant Dan Ryan calls in the team of Price and Merritt. Their assignment — to go undercover and infiltrate the club, posing as a new swinging couple. As their research begins, they find a world unlike any other; a world where every carefully chosen amenity is geared to easing each casual sexual encounter; and a world which, unbeknownst to its members, harbors a clever, homicidal madman. Two Plus Two opens the doors of a closed-door milieu, that of the on-the-premise-swinging club — intriguing, mysterious, and, sometimes, deadly. It also introduces us to two new detectives — one male, one female — of whom more will be heard.
[edit] Replay
The 1988 World Fantasy Award went to Grimwood for his novel Replay (Arbor House, 1987), the compelling account of 43-year-old radio journalist Jeff Winston, who dies and awakens back in 1963 in his 18-year-old body. He then begins relive his life with intact memories of the next 25 years, and this happens repeatedly with different events in each cycle. This acclaimed novel, a bestseller in Japan, was an obvious influence on Harold Ramis' comedy-drama Groundhog Day (1993), and variations of Grimwood's plot premise can also be seen in the Japanese film Taan, aka Turn (2001), and the 1993 TV movie 12:01, adapted from the Richard A. Lupoff short story "12:01 PM," originally in the December, 1973 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Linear descriptions of Replay do not convey the book's rich philosophical and spiritual underlying themes. Critic Daniel D. Shade outlined the book's buried messages when he reviewed [1] the novel in 2001:
- Yet in spite of all the pain and anguish we go through as we follow Jeff through his search for an understanding of why he is replaying his life, the book has some important things to say to the reader. First, life is full of endless happenings that we have little control over. We should live our lives with our eyes set upon the horizon and never look back; controlling those things we can and giving no second thought to those events out of our hands. Second, given that we only have one life to live (Jeff is never sure he will replay again with each heart attack) we should live it to the fullest extent possible and with the least regret for our actions. Everybody makes mistakes; the point is not to dwell on them but to pick ourselves up and keep on going. Keep moving ahead. Third, choices must be made—we cannot avoid them. The only failure is to live a life without risks. In fact, I believe Jeff Winston would advise risking everything for those you love and for the life you want for them and with them. To not experience risk is to fail. And want does Replay have to say to a poor, old man like me who is still going though his mid-life crisis? Just this—that every year will be new. Every day a new chance to begin again. There can be no mid-life crisis when we are living each day to the fullest extent possible. From what Jeff Winston has taught me, I would define mid-life crisis as a period of selfishness when we turn inward and think only of ourselves. Jeff has inspired me to look outward toward others and think less of myself.
The novel was a selection of the Literary Guild and the Doubleday Book Club, and it was included in several lists of recommended reading: Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels (1988), Aurel Guillemette's The Best in Science Fiction (1993), David Pringle's Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction (1995) and the Locus Reader's Poll: Best Science Fiction Novel (1988). In the Locus 1998 poll of the best fantasy novels published prior to 1990, Replay placed #32. On the Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List, Replay was voted to the #43 position in 2000 but climbed to #19 by 2003.
[edit] Into the Deep
Grimwood's fascination with cetacean intelligence, encounters with dolphins and research into intraspecies dolphin communication gave him the inspiration for Into the Deep (William Morrow, 1995), a "spiritual adventure" about a marine biologist struggling to crack the code of dolphin intelligence. It features lengthy imaginative passages written from the point-of-view of several dolphin characters. To research "the willful denial and gratuitous cruelty" involved in tuna fishing, Grimwood secretly infiltrated the crew of a San Diego-based tuna boat.
[edit] Elise and The Voice Outside
Other novels include The Voice Outside (1982), exploring mind control and telepathy-inducing drugs, and Elise (1979). Born in Versailles in 1683, Elise is immortal due to her DNA, and the story traces her experiences with various lovers and husbands through the centuries.
At age 59, Grimwood died of a heart attack in his home in Santa Barbara, California. At the time of his death, he was writing a sequel to Replay. He is included in the Guide to Santa Barbara Authors and Publishers at the University of California, Santa Barbara. There is at least one unpublished Grimwood novel, a collaboration with Tom Atwill.
