Remake

'''Willis, Connie. Remake.''' 1995. Coll. Future Imperfect (Three Short Novels). ISBN 1-56865-186-4. Np: Guild Books, (1996). "Published by arrangement with Bantam Books | A Division of Bantam Doubleday Dell." S. F. Book Club book.

Hard S.F. love story set in a near-future Hollywood in which the (re)making of movies is a computer operation extrapolated from current techniques of computer graphics imaging (CGI) and VR. The protagonist-narrator is a hacker: computer hacker, plus a hack film censor, working on a project removing all aural and visual references to addictive substances in films (primarily tobacco products and alcohol). He is also the male lead in a plot combining very consciously and explicitly a number of movie clichés—as he goes after the woman he loves as she follows her dream of dancing in film musicals. She eventually does dance in films, even though Hollywood musicals aren't made anymore. How she manages it involves the possibility of time-travel, a futuristic form of public transportation, and (solving the mystery in the story) the transmission into the past of data (cf. and contrast Gregory Benford's Timescape (1980).

(RDE, 12/06/96)