Ken Grimwood

Background

Grimwood was born in Dothan, Alabama. His sister, Teresa Panther-Yates, once described him as "a brilliant, beautiful human being who knew that the best of fiction has a message."

Grimwood took an interest in EC Comics and radio journalism while growing up in Pensacola, Florida. He graduated from Indian Springs School in 1961 and then spent the summer in Paris while studying at the Sorbonne. He attended Emory College from 1961 to 1963. In the 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, graduating in 1970.

Some of his early novels were written while he was nightside editor at KFWB News 980 radio in Los Angeles, but the success of Replay enabled him to leave KFWB News 980 for full-time writing. 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."

Towards the end of his life, Grimwood maintained a brief email correspondence with Hellboy screenwriter Peter Briggs, whom he contacted after seeing Briggs' review of Replay on the book's Amazon feedback page, revealed in an interview with Briggs in 2004.

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 murderess 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:

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."

Two Plus Two

Grimwood used the pseudonym Alan Cochran on his novel Two Plus Two (Doubleday, 1980), but in Replay he offered a clue to Two Plus Two's true author with a sequence in which the main character of Replay 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:

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 to relive his life with intact memories of the previous 25 years. This happens repeatedly with different events in each cycle. The premise was explored earlier by Richard A. Lupoff in his 1973 short story "12:01". The novel was a bestseller in Japan, and its time-loop concept has been referenced as a precursor of Harold Ramis' comedy-drama Groundhog Day (1993).

Critic Daniel D. Shade outlined the book's buried messages when he reviewed the novel in 2001:

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.

In 1986 the agent Irene Webb (then at the William Morris Agency which still represents Ken's work) sold the film rights to Replay to United Artists for a $100,000 option against a $400,000 purchase.

As of 2013, Replay has been continuously in print in English, French and Japanese since 1987, is in print in German and Chinese, and available as an audio book in English (publ. Tantor). Replay is contracted to be published in 2013 in Russian, Turkish, Portuguese and Bahasa Indonesia. Elise is contracted to be published in Turkish in 2013.

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), 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. The publisher described the book:

Grimwood's environmental concerns were also evident in a letter he wrote to Los Angeles Times in 2002:

August 31, 2002, SaturdayGetting Those Nasty Butts Off the StreetsAs an ex-smoker, I am also disgusted by the idea of thousands of cigarette butts littering the streets and ultimately being swept into the ocean ("Litterbugs and Butts," letter, Aug. 26). I am confused, however, about what smokers in largely pedestrian areas such as Westwood, Venice, the promenades in Santa Monica and Pasadena, and State Street in Santa Barbara are supposed to do with their smoldering butts.Your letter writer suggests putting them in trash cans. Just how many trash fires per block would he like to see on an average day?On a recent trip to Sydney, Australia, I noticed that the city has placed hotel-style ashtrays filled with sand on sidewalks throughout the central business district and the historic area called "the Rocks." Smokers obviously use them; I almost never saw cigarette butts crushed out on the streets or sidewalks in this delightfully clean and friendly city.I know it may smack of "enabling" to rabidly anti-smoking Californians, but if we really want to keep the streets clean of this noxious litter, it might be a good idea to give smokers (including many foreign tourists) a safe and handy place to dispose of their used cigarettes.Ken GrimwoodSanta Barbara

Other works

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 because of her DNA, and the story traces her experiences with various lovers and husbands through the centuries. Elise is now regarded as a rare book and sells at collector prices.

Death

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.