The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Harry August is living his life over and over again, always born to the same mother in
the same time and place, but living in a world that’s altered each time because of the
actions of the others who are also reliving their lives. The world Claire North (aka Cat
Webb) built has a rich, interlocking structure: The repetitions are synchronous in that
the entire life of the universe plays out before restarting from the beginning for
everyone, but only a handful, such as Harry, remember the previous time around. Those who
do remember have formed a society whose overriding purpose is to keep the status quo
because once a change is made and a person is not born during a cycle of the universe,
that person will never again be born. The society also arranges a system to send messages
back through the generations by having young reborn children contact older society
members who are near death. From time to time, changes in the universe cause new members
to be born, and thus, Harry appears just in time to become embroiled in a vicious plot to
change everything.
I was fortunate to meet Cat Webb at the 2015 Campbell Conference in
Lawrence, Kansas, where she cheerfully talked to me and Rob Maslen about anything and
everything during the week leading up to the announcement of Harry August as the
winner of the 2015 Campbell Award for the best novel of the year. Yay, Cat (and yay for
your friendliness and wry sense of humor)!
My first life, for all it lacked any real direction, had about it a kind of happiness, if
ignorance is innocence, and loneliness is a separation of care. But my new life, with its
knowledge of all that had come before, could not be lived the same. It wasn’t merely
awareness of events yet to come, but rather a new perception of the truths around me,
which, being a child raised to them in my first life, I had not even considered to be
lies.