Tomorrowing

by Terry Bisson

For twenty years, Terry Bisson published a regular “This Month in History” column in the science fiction magazine Locus. Tomorrowing collects these two decades of memorable events---four per month---each set in a totally different imaginary yet possible, inevitable yet avoidable future. From the first AI president to the first dog on Mars to the funeral of Earth’s last glacier, these stories are speculative SF at its most (and least) serious. Collected as a series for the first time, Tomorrowing will amuse, alarm, intrigue, entertain, and like all good science fiction, make readers think. Bisson’s short stories have won every major award in science fiction, including the Hugo and the Nebula, but never, ever anything for this series.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction

168 pages, Paperback

Published May 14, 2024

About the author

Terry Ballantine Bisson was an American science fiction and fantasy author best known for his short stories, including "Bears Discover Fire" (1990), which which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, as well as They're Made Out of Meat (1991), which has been adapted for video often.

Adapted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tomorrowing is a collection of ultra-short fiction published in a column titled 'This Month in History' in Locus magazine over nearly a decade. Each piece is deliberately clipped and glib, like a news headline summary, at most four sentences long. Certain topics, ideas, and motifs recur, as well as frequent contemporary references. Some of which have dated better than others. In keeping with the pseudo-news headline format, there are a lot of massive disasters, scandals, and 'firsts'. Some the more memorable are set in a future that is now the past and appear prescient, like this from 2005:

JANUARY 2, 2023. Film breaks billion mark. The Return of the Mummy's Daughter Returns Again 2 shatters holiday box office records with a $1.2 billion opening on 323,456 screens worldwide. The previous record of $0.9 billion was held by the 2018 Winfrey-Tarantino feely Daddy? No!

I've been deliberately avoiding most news about America recently, so for all I know this has actually happened:

AUGUST 5, 2026. Marriage Amendment ratified. After a close vote in Kansas, the 28th Amendment is officially added to the US Constitution, specifying that matrimony must be between a man and a woman. It also forbids divorce and makes adultery a felony.

Conversely, this one made me smile:

FEBRUARY 19, 2032. First manned Mars landing. Sporting Kickstarter T-shirts over space tights, the Endeavour II crew debarks at Eberswalde Crater rim, gamely smiling for the web despite the news that their return voyage is only 11% funded.

As did this:

MARCH 14, 2379. Five hundredth birthday of Albert Einstein. The playful physicist's theory of relativity, science's most enduring hoax, is credited with delaying interstellar travel for almost two centuries.

The smile became more of a grimace when reading several entries in which Elon Musk left on some space mission and was 'never heard from again' (if only) and:

JUNE 24, 2028. Fake news? US Election Commission removes the twice-defeated deceased ex-president from the 2028 ballot. His TruthSocial tweets insist that he is still alive, although he has not been seen in person since 2026.

Tomorrowing is a fast and mostly fun read, essentially consisting of science fiction in tweet format.

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 4 out of 5]

You're not going to read this for very long. Maybe ten, fifteen minutes at a time, then you'll want to put it down. And come back to it later.

That makes it the perfect bathroom book.

For about twenty years, Terry Bisson published little squibs in Locus magazine called “This Month in History”. Based on the little 'this date in history' notices you see in the daily newspaper (for those who still get newspapers), he projected the concept into the future. What would some of these be?

May 21, 2062. Carbon-free clouds. Last fuel-oil jet, a Boeing 997, retires with honors as global air fleet goes 100% hydro-nuclear. It will hang in Seattle's Smithsonian.

There are a lot of items about climate change. Terry paints a fairly grim future, except for lighthearted mitigation items like the above.

March 19, 2055. Reparations? Delaware civil jury awards $488,000 to every African-American in historic class-action judgment against FHA for 1946-1976 redlining damages.

Yes, there are a number of social or political items as well. In fact, I'd say most of them are.

Sometimes he actually seems to be prophetic. Here is one he published in 2005:

July 4, 2013. Pot party on White House lawn. While drug dealers and police protest outside in a rare public display of unity, President Obama signs executive order officially ending the most destructive public health policy since Prohibition. Special guest ex-President Clinton inhales.

Not only did he get Barack Obama correctly in office in 2013, but he also prefigured the loosening of marijuana laws, although that's happened at the state and local level, not federal. But it recognized Obama's casual acknowledgment that he smoked pot while skewering Bill Clinton's namby-pamby response.

And then there are things like this:

April 14, 2055. Stonehenge dismantled. As a sorrowful King William looks on, angry Oxford archeologists with wrecking balls topple England's celebrated Druidic monument. Once thought genuine, the ring of stones was determined by scholars to be a neolithic tourist replica of a Neanderthal dance hall.

This is a fun little (150 pages) book, but as I said, you can only read so many of these at a time.

So, get a copy and enjoy a little quality time each day.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just so many ideas here--ideas for novels, ideas for short stories, things that amount to short-shorts in their own right. Plus, threaded jokes: Elon Musk sets out on some expedition, never to be seen again; fracking causes catastrophic damages; the earth's various fundamentalisms unite; AIs rule the Supreme Court; corporations obtain the right to marry; corporations buy everything, including the Vatican and the atmosphere; environmental ruin happens, in so many ways and from so many directions; shoutouts to various colleagues, especially Rudy Rucker and Karen Joy Fowler. Also, the first computer's creation is celebrated over and over. Some of these are almost scarily accurate.
Probably best read in bits, just because too many ideas all at once can overwhelm you. Seven favorite bits, of the 15 I noted while reading:
"December 12, 2016. Intelligent design confirmed. The discovery in a Wyoming shale bed of a fossilized demon carrying a to-do scroll silences the last fanatical adherents of Darwin's archaic theory while disappointing those attributing ID to a benevolent deity."
"March 24, 2032. March madness. A malfunctioning RoboRef(TM), apparently upset by catcalls, charges into the stands during a close Duke-UK game, killing four Kentucky Wildcats fans and injuring a security guard. Game goes into overtime; NCAA promises postseason investigation."
"August 5, 2026. Marriage Amendment ratified. After a close vote in Kansas, the 28th Amendment is officially added to the US Constitution, specifying that matrimony must be between a man and a woman. It also forbids divorce and makes adultery a felony." (He wrote this in 2006, mis-predicting the schemes of Project 2025 by only a year.)
From a 2008 column: "April 29, 2065. Phone virus shuts Boston schools. The debilitating ringtone flu, which renders victims speechless for up to 24 hours, is thought by scientists to be the first virus to make the leap from digital to bio."
From 2010: "June 13, 2298. Satellite snags Booker. Simon & Comcast's orbital AlgoRhythm IV, which auto-assembles global e-media scraps into genre bestsellers, was directly over Udder-Pinwick, Sussex, when the prizewinning Murder by Weapon was downcast. Author's Guild objects."
From 2011: "July 1, 1862. Lincoln deleted from Rushmore. Fulfilling a campaign promise, President Paul personally dynamites the face of the tax-and-spender who established the income tax and the IRS on this date in 1862. Lincoln's image will be replaced by that of Paul's grandfather."
"June 21, 2102. Teen torture ban. In a close 10-8 decision, the US Supreme Court restricts strappado and waterboarding of juveniles to cases where public officials feel threatened."

Some of these, by this point, barely qualify as SF anymore, which is pretty damn upsetting.

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Publisher Says: For twenty years, Terry Bisson published a regular “This Month in History” column in the science fiction magazine Locus. Tomorrowing collects these two decades of memorable events—four per month—each set in a totally different imaginary yet possible, inevitable yet avoidable future. From the first AI president to the first dog on Mars to the funeral of Earth’s last glacier, these stories are speculative SF at its most (and least) serious. Collected as a series for the first time, Tomorrowing will amuse, alarm, intrigue, entertain, and like all good science fiction, make readers think. Bisson’s short stories have won every major award in science fiction, including the Hugo and the Nebula, but never, ever anything for this series.

My Review: You like alternate history? You like browsable books? You like to be left with thoughts and ideas to chew over as you slip into wherever it is we go when we fall asleep?

Here's you a book. Author Bisson, who died in January at 81, worked for decades in the SF field. Known for planting little seeds of progressiveness in a field dominated by the idiot libertarian/reactionary goofballs who...well, that's a screed for a different day. Bisson turned a hand at every type of writing, these columns show how much there was to do in the genre. Twenty years of tilling the field and he never repeated himself.

[Eddie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Terry Bisson, who is probably best known for his award winning story "Bears Discover Fire", wrote This Month In History for Locus for 20 years. Each column consisted of four alternate history nuggets. This was not an attempt to construct a future history, but an ongoing and largely amusing set of 'factoids'

Tomorrowing collects all 20 years. In them, we see many experiments in writing. Not all of them land, at least not for me, but enough do that this is a worthwhile memorial for Mr. Bison, who passed away last January.

[Matthew Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun exercise, and close in scope/theme to stuff I would write when I was still writing regularly. Getting to see a collection of these aphoristic headlines over the period of two decades acts as a shadow history of what was happening in the US and what was occupying Bisson's mind as the years pass: from the Iraq War, through the financial crisis and up to the Trump era and Covid.

Much like a book of poetry or a collection of short stories, not all of them work (indeed, some have aged particularly poorly). But when they hit, they hit: trenchant, sizzling and truthful.

[Simon Barraclough · Rating 4 out of 5]

A superior ‘bathroom book’ to dip in and out of. If amusing ideas were blueberries and books were muffins, this one would fall apart like the abundantly fruited example in Martin Scorsese’s Casino>.

[Lord Humungus · Rating 3 out of 5]

An inspired collection of future headlines, jam-packed with great ideas. Some are great science fiction, some are hilarious nuggets, and some snippets are prescient that hit depressingly close to reality. I lol-ed at least a couple of times so, really, that made the whole thing worth it.

[Nigel McFarlane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amusing little book: a collection of "On this day in history" snippets from the future. Mostly it's wonderfully daft, but once or twice it manages to get something startlingly correct.

[HopeF · Rating 3 out of 5]

Often political, sometimes humorous, this collection of science-fiction snippets is overall a fun read.

[geakin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An often hilarious collection of news stories from the future.