I'm just rereading a book I first read close to 30 years ago and I'm
enjoying it so much that I wanted to mention it here. It's called
Timeshare and the author is Joshua Dann. It was published in 1997. The
reason I'm recommending it is that it's chockful of famous actors and
film people, including John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, John Ford, and a
host of others. Other real people from history also play important
roles, including Ian Fleming and William Stephenson (better known as
"The Man Called Intrepid").

It's a fast-paced SF story set in the near future (when it was written)
of 2006 when someone has invented a time machine and the first guy to
try it out is a former LAPD officer named John Surrey. The inventor is
keen to determine if changing something back in the past could change
the future - a well-known paradox of science fiction famously discussed
in a Ray Bradbury short story - so they decided that John will go back
to Hollywood in 1940 and try to get a role in a classic film, displacing another actor, and then see if that changes history. In order to get
cast in a Hollywood film, Surrey has to make some connections and soon
hits on a clever way of doing so without having to get an agent. He's
soon chumming around with all sorts of famous names.

I won't spoil the rest of the story but I will say that it's very
fast-paced and a real page-turner. If you like the story, there are two sequels as well. And if you like them, Dann has written a number of
other books under pseudonyms. I think I have all of them and they're all
a lot of fun.

--
Rhino


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