<p>It must be pleasant to have the world be all about you. In two ways, since <A href="https://www.librarything.com/work/17837807/book/160490671">All Our Wrongs Today</a>, our protagonist Tom lives in a sort of utopia, which he manages, via time travel, to screw up with the result that what we have isn't a technological utopia, but rather this, here, all around us. Yep, we had a 1960s future paradise, and then blammo! Trump (not explicitly but let's throw him in there) and jerks and capitalism and poverty and auto-tuned pop songs all the time on the radio just because of Tom.
Geez, Tom. What a schlub.</p>

<p>But, don't fear. Even though our Tom is a schlub, he gets to have sex. Lots of sex. And he has a bunch of ex-girlfriends who he totally isn't going to mention by name, but then again, here's a list, and he probably also had sex with them too. Because it's super super super super super important for this female reader to know that even though Tom is a self-admitted loser, he pulls man, he pulllllllls.</p>

<p><a href="https://www.reluctantm.com/review-of-sideboob-i-mean-failsafe-by-f-j-desanto/">Side-boob anyone</a>?</p>

<p>So we have an entertaining, sci-fi romp that I actually enjoyed reading and I'm not talking about the story or the science or the science-fiction, but the fiction that schlubby, self-admitted losers should get to have multiple universes/realities where they get to have sex with hot chicks (also intelligent -- we're made sure to notice that not only are the bone-buddies hot, they're smart too). </p>

<p><i>Oh! But Tom having sex is a plot point that starts the whole destruction of the universe</i> fans will tell me.</p>

<p>Yeah, well, I'm sure Elan Mastai could have figured out something else. He developed multiple theories of time travel in <A href="https://www.librarything.com/work/17837807/book/160490671">All Our Wrongs Today</a>, he's clever enough not to have major plot points hinging on some guy's dick.</p>

<p>Good book, ruined for me because I'm not a heterosexual male who is titillated by good guys getting to have lots of sex. </p>

<p><A href="https://www.librarything.com/work/17837807/book/160490671">All Our Wrongs Today</a> by Elan Mastai went on sale February 7, 2017.</p>

<p><small>I received a copy free from <a href="https://www.netgalley.com/">Netgalley</a> in exchange for an honest review.</small></p>

Science Fiction
Adult
What a lot of fun this first novel turned out to be! Tom Barren lives in Toronto in a version of 2016 that is the future as it was envisioned in the 1950s – flying cars that rely on clean and unlimited energy, food replicators, disposable clothes that fit perfectly and are recycled into new ones, robots and peace. Oh, this world isn’t without its troubles, of course. His dad is a jerk, and his beloved mother was killed by a runaway hover car. (The robot that entered the programming error was dismantled.) Tom struggles with relationships and despite being 32 and the son of one of the smartest physicists around, who happens to invent a time travel device, he has not yet found his vocation. His job is thanks to Daddy, understudy to Penelope Weschler, training to be the world’s first chrononaut. After a series of mishaps both happenstance and caused by Tom’s poor decision-making, he lands in our reality; 2016 Toronto with its wars, stinky cars, doors that may need to be pushed open, power outlets and clothes that require the wearer to choose well. But it also has his mother still alive, a gentler version of his dad, a sister Greta, and another version of Penelope who runs a bookstore and is quite attracted and attractive to our hero. The music is also better in our world. After discovering his emotional meets are better met in our world, Tom finds himself struggling with the predictable dilemma – does he try to correct the error and return to the future as it should be, or stay in this one? It’s not as simple as that of course; and Mastai uses smart writing, terrific characters and brilliantly complicated plot twists to guide the reader into cheering for this young and imperfect protagonist, all the while enjoying the fruits of his imaginative futures that are quite simply the wrong todays. The book gets off to a bit of a slow start as Mastai sets up the story. Tom isn’t particularly sympathetic – he’s quite frankly a self-indulgent whiner at times. But I was intrigued enough to keep going and soon found myself immersed in this quirky, accessible, “sci-fi light” time travel story that challenges our understanding of reality. It’s a good choice for those who enjoyed Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter, though more fiction than sci-fi. Kirkus gave it a starred review. My thanks to publisher Penguin Random House Canada for the advance reading copy provided through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
More discussion and reviews of this novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27405006

Wow! Time travel, alternate futures, sci-if (reality?)
For fans of Douglas Adams, or anybody who loves the written word, dystopia/utopia, time travel, physics, paradoxes, anything that requires your brain to work, please read this!

Tom Barren lives in 2016 – but not our 2016. He lives in the futuristic world that was imagined in the optimistic 1950s, filled with flying cars, moon bases, and automated food and clothing made specifically for each person’s taste. Due to the invention of the Gottreider Engine, a machine that draws power from the movement of the Earth’s orbit, there is an endless source of clean energy – which means the people of this alternate 2016 have no environmental damages, no greenhouse gasses and no global warming. Everyone’s needs are catered to and everything seems to be perfect, but Tom is still unhappy.

After the death of his homemaker mother, Tom goes to work for his successful scientist father, who is planning to send a team of time-travelling “chrononauts” back to the moment that the Gottreider Engine was first invented in 1965. Tom is training as a backup chrononaut to superstar Penelope – his father has no faith in his abilities and doesn’t trust Tom to actually travel back in time. However, when events take a surprising turn and Penelope is unable to travel, Tom ends up alone in our version of 2016. To him, our world seems like a dystopian wasteland of pollution and suffering.

When Tom wakes up in a hospital, surrounded by a family that seems familiar but is strangely different, he finds out that his name is John Barren and he is a successful architect in Toronto. He tries to explain that he has just travelled from an alternate timeline, but his sister (who did not exist in his former world) insists that his delusions are taken from John’s unpublished novel, which was originally based on his childhood fantasies about another, futuristic world. Tom begins to doubt his own reality, but he holds on to the idea that John and himself have always been connected through the fabric of time.

Uncertain about his grasp on reality, Tom attempts to live as John. However, he holds on to Tom’s dreams by searching for the Penelope of this world – instead of a successful, independent and sometimes cruel chrononaut, the version of her in this 2016 is a quirky, thoughtful bookshop owner named Penny. Against all odds, Penny believes Tom’s story and the two form a powerful bond that may stand the test of alternate timelines. However, when Tom meets Gottreider, the inventor of the engine, he must decide whether his own happiness is worth more than the chance to give our 2016 a source of clean energy that will increase global health and happiness. It is an interesting way of looking at Utilitarian philosophical theory, and forces us to question what we would do in the same situation.

All Our Wrong Todays is written as a memoir of Tom’s travels. I found his voice to be incredibly annoying at first, but the tone changes as he grows as a character, confronting his individual and collective past. Tom’s provocative voice and its development show Mastai’s talent as a writer, especially as someone so unlikeable becomes completely empathetic by the end of the novel. Even Tom writes that he is embarrassed by the earlier, more offensive passages of his memoir, as he develops into a better person. My enjoyment of the book crept up on me as well – I didn’t love it at first, but all of a sudden I couldn’t put it down, and I thought about it when I wasn’t reading. Some parts were repetitious, but it didn’t take away from the overall momentum of the fast-paced plot.

This novel is obviously going to invite comparison to Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter, released last year. While the two books have a lot in common – quantum theory, alternate timelines, the effect one person’s actions can have on the lives of many – I found this one to be much more quirky and entertaining. Mastai gives us a lot to think about, and he makes his philosophy very accessible. I especially liked the idea (taken from French philosopher Paul Virilio) that every time a new technology is invented, the “accident” of that technology is also invented – so when the airplane was invented, so was the plane crash. In his memoir, Tom writes that the accident applies to people as well, and “every person you meet introduces the accident of that person to you…[t]here is no intimacy without consequence.” (Loc. 156) Tom experiences these accidents firsthand, and his reactions are always very human and relatable.

There is so much content and so many ideas here, and I think many different kinds of readers could potentially enjoy this novel. As our own world becomes more technologically advanced, fulfilling some of those dreams that Tom talks about from the 1950s, the line between science fiction and literary writing is becoming less obvious. As Tom tells us, “[t]hat’s all science is. A collection of the best answers we have right now. It’s always open to revision.” (Loc. 2343) Authors like Mastai are inspiring that revision in all of us.

I received this book from Penguin Random House and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Love the point of view, the story,...the characters not so much. Then Tom takes things into his own hands and the results thrust him into an entirely different world. The world may not be as advanced or as seemingly perfect as the one he just left but the people around him are so much more likeable. Why would you want to go back? Should you? Could you?

I had heard great things about this book and really wanted to like this book but I just couldn't get into it. I found Tom to be whiny and lazy and I didn't like any of the other characters enough to continue reading.

I’ve been trying to write this review for a little while now. I had a draft, tossed it out, googled “how to write a book review” (I kid you not) and then came back to this again.

I think I’m struggling because I’m finding it hard to come to a conclusion about how I feel about the book. I felt completely differently about the story at the end of the book than I did at the beginning, and I’m not sure if that’s because I always struggle with time travel plots, or if it’s because the premise of the story was excellent, but the execution was lacking.

At the beginning of the story, we meet Tom Barren. Tom lives in the future that the 1950’s thought we would have. They have an unlimited supply of renewable energy, flying cars, and there are thousands of inventions to dramatically improve their everyday lives. As Tom’s father works tirelessly for the next big scientific breakthrough, Tom struggles to fit in and find his place. In a dramatic turn of events, Tom gets caught up in his father’s work, gets transported back in time (and there is some great stuff in this section about why time travel is difficult), and changes the world. Now he’s stuck in “our world”, but soon discovers that it’s maybe not as bad as he initially thought.

What I found particularly compelling about the story was the science that apparently makes all of this possible. The Gottreider Engine is a fictional machine that is the source of energy in the novel, and underpins the entire narrative. It works by harnessing the motion of the Earth through space to generate unlimited power. This source of clean energy is what makes Tom’s world so different and more advanced than ours, and had me convinced that it was a brilliant idea. I haven’t read something like this in fiction before which was refreshing, but the concept has the allure of a Dyson Sphere about it, which is familiar. It’s so big and unwieldy that I can’t fathom actually creating one, but had me wondering if it was theoretically possible. In my mind, this is the key to great science fiction.

I was hooked by chapter two, and raced through the next couple hundred pages. Somewhere along the way, I began to lose interest. It wasn’t a chore to finish by any means, but I wasn’t invested in the character anymore, and while I wanted to know how it all ended, I didn’t find myself drawn to my laptop and wanting to spend all my time reading this book. And I think this is where the time travel elements of the plot bogged me down. As Captain Janeway (the source of all wisdom) said,”Time travel. Since my first day on the job as a Starfleet captain I swore I’d never let myself get caught in one of these godforsaken paradoxes – the future is the past, the past is the future, it all gives me a headache.”

What ends up happening is that I try to logic the situation and keep everything straight, and I think that’s the job of the author. The reader should be able to just enjoy the story and not need to create themselves a timeline to follow along. And this plot wasn’t even *that* complicated. I just didn’t want to think about it. And that really slowed me down.
The tone of the writing was great throughout. Mastai has spent years as a screenwriter and it really shows. Tom is speaking directly to the audience for much of the story and he’s honest, crass, at times witty and at other irreverential. But this all serves to draw you into the story and to care about him. He also does some interesting things with the structure of the story that pay off later and I really appreciated that.

At around the halfway mark, there were some interesting discussion between the character about time travel, parallel worlds, and how it all might work. Some of it is based on scientific theories I’m familiar with (insomuch as a lay person can be familiar with quantum physics) and some of it was more philosophical and I loved it all. It was a smart way to break up the frantic pacing and do some character development. In particular:

“We didn’t have the resources to actually make the stuff we came up with, so we stuck them in our science fiction. We kept them safe in our dreams. And then you assholes raided our imaginations, took credit for our ideas, and built yourself a paradise.”

So for me, the second half of the book struggled to keep my interest and I struggled to care as much as I had in the first half. And as I got closer to the ending, I found myself feeling a familiar sense of dread. The writer has spent hundreds of pages developing a world and the rules that govern it, and now they have to wrap everything up in a way that is both convincing yet original. And inevitably, they are doomed to fail on at least one account.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but the end just felt too neat, like a perfectly wrapped gift. I like having a bit of a mess left over. You can’t mess with time and space and then just expect it to all work out. You might argue that it wasn’t tidy and clean for all characters, but I didn’t really care about them anyway, so the painful bits just didn’t land for me. If I was to predict the future, the things about this book that will stay with me will be the Gottreider Engine and the science-y bits about time travel. The characters will fade and I likely won’t even remember the ending.

A cool book. Full of interesting observations and ideas. Also, very unique.

An excellent debut novel, one of the first must reads of 2017

Elan Mastai is the writer of, among other things, The F Word — a movie set in Toronto that I found utterly charming and amusing. When I discovered that he’d written a novel, I immediately tried to get a review copy. I eventually did (thank you, Doubleday!), and I am delighted to report that the novel did not disappoint. All Our Wrong Todays is an endearing, amusing, thought-provoking novel. Certainly, it is one of the year’s first must-reads.

The premise is pretty interesting. The rather long synopsis above gives you most of what you need to know, but there’s more to the story than the dangerous of time travel. It is a story about how situation can help or hinder people’s growth. It is a story of how we conceive ourselves — in relation to friends and family, societal expectations, and our own insecurities.

>> Lionel Goettreider read Cat’s Cradle and had a crucial realization, what he called the ‘Accident’ — when you invent a new technology, you also invent the accident of that technology.
When you invent the car, you also invent the car accident… I have a theory too: The Accident doesn’t just apply to technology, it also applies to people. Every person you meet introduces the accident of that person to you. What can go right and what can go wrong. There is no intimacy without consequence.

We follow Tom for some time in his original reality (which I was a little surprised by, but not disappointed). He’s not particularly accomplished: living in the shadow of his genius father, still not over the death of his mother, and crushed by a seemingly-endless ennui. He’s a nerd, a bit of a loser. After he is rudely dropped into our reality, though, he quickly reassesses himself. His family is different. His life is considerably different, and proves to be a massive adjustment. At the same time, he becomes distracted and obsessed with the possibility of a second chance… (won’t spoil what). The time travel stuff, and the paradoxes that can arise, were interestingly presented and written. It also sounds pretty plausible, and Mastai does a great job of highlighting the many downsides of its use — especially when it comes to obsessions. (One aspect of time travelling, late in the novel, is actually horrifying.)

All the while, Tom indulges in a fair amount of introspection and self-analysis. As someone who has spent not a little time trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing, I thought Mastai did a great job of writing a character that was interesting and sympathetic, without moving into self-indulgence. He’s particularly interesting when it comes to comparing our reality to his own, or analyzing our state of mind.

>> The current state of the world isn’t because we stopped believing in an optimistic spirit of wonder and discovery, the current state of the world is the consequence of that belief. People are despondent about the future because they’re increasingly aware that we, as a species, chased an inspiring dream that led us to ruin. We told ourselves the world is here for us to control, so the better our technology, the better our control, the better our world will be. The fact that for every leap in technology the world gets more sour and chaotic is deeply confusing. The better things we build keep making it worse. The belief that the world is here for humans to control is the philosophical bedrock of our civilization, but it’s a mistaken belief. Optimism is the pyre on which we’ve been setting ourselves aflame.

Aside from an engaging protagonist, I was impressed and interested in all of his characters. They are all three-dimensional individuals. At no point, I think, did I feel any acted our of character. The novel is filled with small moments and touches that suggest an author who is a fantastic observer of human nature and relationships. One chapter in particular, 90, is one of the best interactions I’ve ever read — it’s framed so simply, yet brilliantly; you get a wonderful insight and picture of a character. Superb. (Chapter 97, a single paragraph, is also a fantastic achievement.) I’m not someone who usually picks up on the craft of writing, but this novel is packed with brilliant examples of great writing. Whether a scene of dialogue, description, or action — Mastai seems to be able to write it all.

All Our Wrong Todays is a fantastic novel, and one I would wholeheartedly recommend. Brilliantly written, populated by sympathetic and engaging characters, and thought-provoking. I can’t wait to read what Mastai writes next (or see, if it’s a movie).