"Distant Replay" is a magic realism

Magic realism

Magic realism or magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world. The story explains these magical elements as real occurrences, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of...

/slipstream short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 published in 2007 by Mike Resnick

Mike Resnick

Michael Diamond Resnick , better known by his published name Mike Resnick, is an American science fiction author. He was executive editor of Jim Baen's Universe.-Biography:...

. It was nominated for the 2008 Hugo Award for Best Short Story

Hugo Award for Best Short Story

The Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially...

.

Plot summary

The story follows Walter Silverman, a man who sees a young woman that looks exactly like his deceased wife. As he gets to know her he discovers that she has too many things in common for this to be a coincidence. He then comes up with a plan to help out her love life and manages to find his own Avatar

Avatar

In Hinduism, an avatar is a deliberate descent of a deity to earth, or a descent of the Supreme Being and is mostly translated into English as "incarnation," but more accurately as "appearance" or "manifestation"....

 for her to meet.

External links

• Distant Replay by Mike Resnick at BestScienceFictionStories.com - A review of the story and resources for finding it.
• An audio version is available on Escape Pod
  Escape Pod (podcast)
  Escape Pod is a magazine-style podcast launched on 12 May 2005 which presents stories in the genre of science fiction. It has been called "the world's leading science fiction podcast". Until his retirement in May 2010, the podcast was hosted by founder Steve Eley and edited by Jeremiah Tolbert...
  
  : http://escapepod.org/2008/05/01/ep156-distant-replay/