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À la fin du XIXᵉ siècle, le professeur Adler Beck étudie les glaciers et les changements climatiques liés à l'éruption des volcans, aux courants marins et aux cycles solaires. Après des années de recherche, il arrive à la conclusion que la planète subira un refroidissement majeur dans le courant du XXIᵉ siècle.
Pourtant, en 2050, le climat ne cesse de se réchauffer et la montée des eaux semble inéluctable. C'est en tout cas ce que constate au quotidien Chad Ramsey, qui vient d'être évincé de son poste de profileur pour la police. Juste avant son licenciement, on lui a implanté dans le crâne un moyen de communication révolutionnaire. Il va s'en servir pour aider son jumeau, Gregory, qui cherche à en savoir plus sur un grand-oncle qui aurait fait de la prison il y a bien longtemps.
Cet ancêtre serait-il Adolf Beck, le frère jumeau d'Adler, qui aurait connu un certain succès sur les scènes d'opéra d'Amérique du Sud ? À moins qu'il ne s'agisse d'un dénommé John Smith, condamné à cinq ans de travaux forcés pour escroquerie en 1877 ? La vérité pourrait bien remettre en question les certitudes de Chad.
Usurpation d'identité, gémellité, dérèglement climatique et réalité déformée.
Pourtant, en 2050, le climat ne cesse de se réchauffer et la montée des eaux semble inéluctable. C'est en tout cas ce que constate au quotidien Chad Ramsey, qui vient d'être évincé de son poste de profileur pour la police. Juste avant son licenciement, on lui a implanté dans le crâne un moyen de communication révolutionnaire. Il va s'en servir pour aider son jumeau, Gregory, qui cherche à en savoir plus sur un grand-oncle qui aurait fait de la prison il y a bien longtemps.
Cet ancêtre serait-il Adolf Beck, le frère jumeau d'Adler, qui aurait connu un certain succès sur les scènes d'opéra d'Amérique du Sud ? À moins qu'il ne s'agisse d'un dénommé John Smith, condamné à cinq ans de travaux forcés pour escroquerie en 1877 ? La vérité pourrait bien remettre en question les certitudes de Chad.
Usurpation d'identité, gémellité, dérèglement climatique et réalité déformée.
368 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 2022
34 people are currently reading
621 people want to read
About the author
Christopher Priest
179 books1,073 followersChristopher Priest was born in Cheshire, England. He began writing soon after leaving school and has been a full-time freelance writer since 1968.
He has published eleven novels, four short story collections and a number of other books, including critical works, biographies, novelizations and children’s non-fiction.
He has written drama for radio (BBC Radio 4) and television (Thames TV and HTV). In 2006, The Prestige was made into a major production by Newmarket Films. Directed by Christopher Nolan, The Prestige went straight to No.1 US box office. It received two Academy Award nominations. Other novels, including Fugue For a Darkening Island and The Glamour, are currently in preparation for filming.
He is Vice-President of the H. G. Wells Society. In 2007, an exhibition of installation art based on his novel The Affirmation was mounted in London.
As a journalist he has written features and reviews for The Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, the Scotsman, and many different magazines.
He has published eleven novels, four short story collections and a number of other books, including critical works, biographies, novelizations and children’s non-fiction.
He has written drama for radio (BBC Radio 4) and television (Thames TV and HTV). In 2006, The Prestige was made into a major production by Newmarket Films. Directed by Christopher Nolan, The Prestige went straight to No.1 US box office. It received two Academy Award nominations. Other novels, including Fugue For a Darkening Island and The Glamour, are currently in preparation for filming.
He is Vice-President of the H. G. Wells Society. In 2007, an exhibition of installation art based on his novel The Affirmation was mounted in London.
As a journalist he has written features and reviews for The Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, the Scotsman, and many different magazines.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
September 4, 2022
As opposed to the Archipelago novels and stories and like An American Story, Expect Me Tomorrow brings a somewhat unorthodox take to a major topic of our times (with a bibliography at the end like the novel about 9/11 mentioned above), namely climate change, while tackling some aspects of police work both in our future of a few decades hence (2050) and in London of the 1890s or so (which is another topic favored by the author as we saw in The Evidence).
The storyline weaves between the 1850-1900s and 2050, with a British-Norwegian climatologist specializing in glaciers and with visions of an apocalyptic ice age ahead, while his twin opera-singer and more of an adventurer traipse around the world in the 19th century, while two brothers, living on opposite sides of the Scottish border, one a police profiler in the south of the rump UK, the other a freelance journalist living in (independent) Scotland with assignments in the many troubled places of Europe and the world (full of refugees from the heated climate that made so many places quite unlivable by 2050 and led to broken states, warlordism etc) being the characters in 2050
The link is slowly revealed and the pure sf part deals with that quite well, though still, one needs to immerse in the awesome prose of the author to avoid thinking too much about the inherent paradoxes in said link.
As usual for the author, the narrative energy of the novel is such that one is compelled to turn the pages, and (assuming one buys said paradoxes) the book actually hangs very well together and has a good ending that adds to it.
The storyline weaves between the 1850-1900s and 2050, with a British-Norwegian climatologist specializing in glaciers and with visions of an apocalyptic ice age ahead, while his twin opera-singer and more of an adventurer traipse around the world in the 19th century, while two brothers, living on opposite sides of the Scottish border, one a police profiler in the south of the rump UK, the other a freelance journalist living in (independent) Scotland with assignments in the many troubled places of Europe and the world (full of refugees from the heated climate that made so many places quite unlivable by 2050 and led to broken states, warlordism etc) being the characters in 2050
The link is slowly revealed and the pure sf part deals with that quite well, though still, one needs to immerse in the awesome prose of the author to avoid thinking too much about the inherent paradoxes in said link.
As usual for the author, the narrative energy of the novel is such that one is compelled to turn the pages, and (assuming one buys said paradoxes) the book actually hangs very well together and has a good ending that adds to it.
April 22, 2025
#8 Priest: Expect me tomorrow - or not?
"Expect me tomorrow." A simple message. Your brother who lives abroad sends you this short message as he boards his plane to meet you the next day. It is quite certain that the brothers will see each other in just one day. Or do they?
Around this statement, Christopher Priest develops a story that spans several timelines and two sets of twins, both genetically identical, but who have chosen different professions and seemingly different lifestyles. And then there is the unique case of John Smith, who has been arrested several times for fraudulent behaviour, a case that Priest has taken from reality and woven into the story.
Is the brother coming the next day? Can we expect him? Priest extends this intimate question to a more general one: What can we expect from tomorrow? This question has become much more urgent and relevant in our time, as climate change threatens to drastically alter our way of life. In one timeline, the twins Adler and Adolf Beck, living in the late 19th century, are not yet thinking about man-made climate change. For Adler, a respected climate scientist, volcanoes and solar cycles could affect the Earth's climate. In another timeline, in 2050, Chad Ramsey is faced with the consequences of releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Hastings, his home on the coast of south-east England, is doomed as rising sea levels destroy the land and higher temperatures make the place uninhabitable without 24/7 air conditioning. The two timelines are linked by blood and a new experimental chip implanted in Chad Ramsey's head. Is Adolf Beck identical to this criminal John Smith?
What can we expect from tomorrow? A difficult question in the face of climate change. Priest lets Chad Ramsey ask this question and he delves into it: "The future had become a sequence of days: they survived this day, worked through it as it came, managed somehow. Tomorrow dawned with the apprehension, that something else might have to be survived, worked through, managed. They lived on the edge. How long before they would have to join the general drift away from the increasingly hazardous seashore [...]? They hung on, day after day, expecting nothing of tomorrow. [...] Tomorrow might be better, but that was true no longer. Chances were exhausted."
In 2050, you can see the characters living from day to day, not out of naivety, but because looking ahead has become too exhausting, too uncertain. There is a deep exhaustion, but also a kind of silent perseverance.
Priest spans several time periods, tells of twins, lost memories and a climate that affects not only the weather but also people's inner lives. What struck me was that climate change is not just a background issue - it is tangible, palpable, almost physical. From the early beginnings with the work of Adler Beck to the actual consequences in 2050. I found myself thinking of Cloud Atlas a few times while reading - not because of the story, but because of this quiet interweaving of times and destinies. Everything is connected somehow, and nothing is so tangible that you can really hold on to it.
Expect Me Tomorrow is another powerful and intelligent novel from Christopher Priest - one that quietly stays with you. It moves the reader, reflecting on the dangers of rising sea levels and temperatures, but also showing a thread of resistance, however thin. It contains both depressing and hopeful elements, reminding us that even when it feels scary to look at what might happen, there are still ways out of misery - if we're willing to look hard enough.
"Expect me tomorrow." A simple message. Your brother who lives abroad sends you this short message as he boards his plane to meet you the next day. It is quite certain that the brothers will see each other in just one day. Or do they?
Around this statement, Christopher Priest develops a story that spans several timelines and two sets of twins, both genetically identical, but who have chosen different professions and seemingly different lifestyles. And then there is the unique case of John Smith, who has been arrested several times for fraudulent behaviour, a case that Priest has taken from reality and woven into the story.
Is the brother coming the next day? Can we expect him? Priest extends this intimate question to a more general one: What can we expect from tomorrow? This question has become much more urgent and relevant in our time, as climate change threatens to drastically alter our way of life. In one timeline, the twins Adler and Adolf Beck, living in the late 19th century, are not yet thinking about man-made climate change. For Adler, a respected climate scientist, volcanoes and solar cycles could affect the Earth's climate. In another timeline, in 2050, Chad Ramsey is faced with the consequences of releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Hastings, his home on the coast of south-east England, is doomed as rising sea levels destroy the land and higher temperatures make the place uninhabitable without 24/7 air conditioning. The two timelines are linked by blood and a new experimental chip implanted in Chad Ramsey's head. Is Adolf Beck identical to this criminal John Smith?
What can we expect from tomorrow? A difficult question in the face of climate change. Priest lets Chad Ramsey ask this question and he delves into it: "The future had become a sequence of days: they survived this day, worked through it as it came, managed somehow. Tomorrow dawned with the apprehension, that something else might have to be survived, worked through, managed. They lived on the edge. How long before they would have to join the general drift away from the increasingly hazardous seashore [...]? They hung on, day after day, expecting nothing of tomorrow. [...] Tomorrow might be better, but that was true no longer. Chances were exhausted."
In 2050, you can see the characters living from day to day, not out of naivety, but because looking ahead has become too exhausting, too uncertain. There is a deep exhaustion, but also a kind of silent perseverance.
Priest spans several time periods, tells of twins, lost memories and a climate that affects not only the weather but also people's inner lives. What struck me was that climate change is not just a background issue - it is tangible, palpable, almost physical. From the early beginnings with the work of Adler Beck to the actual consequences in 2050. I found myself thinking of Cloud Atlas a few times while reading - not because of the story, but because of this quiet interweaving of times and destinies. Everything is connected somehow, and nothing is so tangible that you can really hold on to it.
Expect Me Tomorrow is another powerful and intelligent novel from Christopher Priest - one that quietly stays with you. It moves the reader, reflecting on the dangers of rising sea levels and temperatures, but also showing a thread of resistance, however thin. It contains both depressing and hopeful elements, reminding us that even when it feels scary to look at what might happen, there are still ways out of misery - if we're willing to look hard enough.
September 14, 2022
The latest Christopher Priest novel is a science fiction novel that combines crimes of the past with a cli-fi setting of the future. It is rather unnerving and impressively clever.
If you’ve read a few Christopher Priest before, such as The Prestige or The Affirmation, you may think you know what to expect, until you don’t. Underneath a veneer of normality, Chris is the master of misdirection*, of cumulatively building up a story whose disparate elements make little sense together – until they do.
This time around, we begin with what seems like a Victorian crime story. There is mention of a London court case where in 1877 a man by the name of John Smith is on trial for what we would now call gaslighting fifteen women in Victorian London. Taking advantage of ‘fallen women’, he offers them a job and leaves a cheque with them but borrows some money and their jewellery from and then disappears. Fourteen other cases are mentioned. In each case the women are left a note – “Expect Me Tomorrow.”
The story then goes forward to 1902 where we meet two blonde and blue-eyed identical twin brothers, Dorf (short for Adolf) and Adler. Adler is quiet and studious and examines glaciers, convinced that there is a link between them and climate change. Dorf is the rather more flighty one who disappears for stretches at a time and loves opera - he can sing tenor. They travel to the USA for Adler to continue his research whilst Dorf after nearly a month decides to go to South America. This part reads like Jules Verne meets Angela’s Ashes.
We discover that both Adler and Dolf have sudden and mysterious ‘incursions’ – times when their body freezes for a few moments, and, unable to move, they hear voices. Both appear afflicted at different times and hear different voices refer to them by name. Is this schizophrenia, or multiverses doing their thing?
Adler spends his time in the USA researching sunspots, coming to the conclusion that they are connected to temperature changes which in turn may be connected to the melting of the glaciers. Dolf makes a living by singing opera and joining a troupe in South America.
Adler makes the calculation that if patterns are repeated then by the end of the 20th century the Northern hemisphere will have entered another Ice Age, bringing the world as we know it to an end. This is obviously of great concern. Meanwhile Adler finds himself settling down and getting married.
Much of the rest of the novel concerns itself with Charles and Greg Ramsey, who are descendants of the Becks' children. Set in 2050, this is a vision of what a future Britain and Europe could be like. Desert dust storms, dying vegetation and nasty biting insects are all part of daily life, with power outages and food scarcity common. Greg is a journalist working for news media outlet BNN, and travels around the world. Much of this part of the story is about Charles/Chad, who is a police profiler made redundant with the advent of new technology. As part of his job he was fitted with an experimental piece of technology, something called an IMC, which is rather like being personally fitted for wifi to enhance communication. Using small graphene batteries, the idea was that this equipment would make his job – and therefore Greg - redundant, although he still has a connection as he has a graphene nanoshield permanently attached to his skull.
These different strands initially seem totally unconnected. This difference is also reflected in each section often having different styles of writing, with much (but not all!) of the Victorian/Edwardian passages written by Adler in the first person or in letters to Adler from Dolf. The future passages are written from the first-person perspective of Greg Ramsey.
As is now rather typical in a Priest book, readers may notice that there are themes and similarities running through the stories. Both the Becks and the Ramseys are twins, and anyone who has read Priest’s novel The Separation (2002) may feel that they’ve come across this idea of identical twins in his work before. It’s an interesting idea that this may create a bond that non-twins may not necessarily have - Heinlein also used this idea in his story A Time for the Stars (1956). Here, though, in each case one of the twins seems to be the model of conformity – a research professor, a police officer – whilst the other is more wayward.
As this is a Christopher Priest novel though, things are not always what we think they are. Christopher is a master writer, in setting out stories that are puzzles. They all sound perfectly sensible - this one begins with a real court case with photos to match, which adds a certain layer of reality to the plot, and adds to the mystique that what you’re reading is real or seems real.
What Christopher then does is lure you in with such reasonableness that you may not immediately realise that there are elements that that don’t always match up and that they’re actually unreliable narratives from unreliable narrators that mesh together in some places but not in others. Part of the fun of a Priest novel is deciding what is real and important and what is not, details that on their own seem quite logical, but then don’t.
Clearly on the pulse of current global concerns, Chris manages to convince the reader that his own research is impeccable. There’s a comprehensive bibliography at the back of the novel to show research should you wish to examine the scientific concepts of the novel further.
Descriptions of changes in climate, mini Ice Ages, glacial melting, ocean current changes and atmospheric conditions such as El Nino are all given here, and explained based on real scientific papers and data. (As a Geographer in my other life, I can say that Chris has managed to do that tricky thing of giving a depth of detailed information and understanding whilst at the same time moving the plot along without too much information dumping.)
In summary, Expect Me Tomorrow is never dull. It actually deals with current issues but in the unexpected way that only a skilled writer can achieve. It is by turns twisty and turny, but always mesmerising, with a satisfying conclusion that doesn’t entirely tie everything together but feels satisfyingly appropriate. Recommended.
*Actually that might be a misdirection – the clues are there, you just might not realise it!
If you’ve read a few Christopher Priest before, such as The Prestige or The Affirmation, you may think you know what to expect, until you don’t. Underneath a veneer of normality, Chris is the master of misdirection*, of cumulatively building up a story whose disparate elements make little sense together – until they do.
This time around, we begin with what seems like a Victorian crime story. There is mention of a London court case where in 1877 a man by the name of John Smith is on trial for what we would now call gaslighting fifteen women in Victorian London. Taking advantage of ‘fallen women’, he offers them a job and leaves a cheque with them but borrows some money and their jewellery from and then disappears. Fourteen other cases are mentioned. In each case the women are left a note – “Expect Me Tomorrow.”
The story then goes forward to 1902 where we meet two blonde and blue-eyed identical twin brothers, Dorf (short for Adolf) and Adler. Adler is quiet and studious and examines glaciers, convinced that there is a link between them and climate change. Dorf is the rather more flighty one who disappears for stretches at a time and loves opera - he can sing tenor. They travel to the USA for Adler to continue his research whilst Dorf after nearly a month decides to go to South America. This part reads like Jules Verne meets Angela’s Ashes.
We discover that both Adler and Dolf have sudden and mysterious ‘incursions’ – times when their body freezes for a few moments, and, unable to move, they hear voices. Both appear afflicted at different times and hear different voices refer to them by name. Is this schizophrenia, or multiverses doing their thing?
Adler spends his time in the USA researching sunspots, coming to the conclusion that they are connected to temperature changes which in turn may be connected to the melting of the glaciers. Dolf makes a living by singing opera and joining a troupe in South America.
Adler makes the calculation that if patterns are repeated then by the end of the 20th century the Northern hemisphere will have entered another Ice Age, bringing the world as we know it to an end. This is obviously of great concern. Meanwhile Adler finds himself settling down and getting married.
Much of the rest of the novel concerns itself with Charles and Greg Ramsey, who are descendants of the Becks' children. Set in 2050, this is a vision of what a future Britain and Europe could be like. Desert dust storms, dying vegetation and nasty biting insects are all part of daily life, with power outages and food scarcity common. Greg is a journalist working for news media outlet BNN, and travels around the world. Much of this part of the story is about Charles/Chad, who is a police profiler made redundant with the advent of new technology. As part of his job he was fitted with an experimental piece of technology, something called an IMC, which is rather like being personally fitted for wifi to enhance communication. Using small graphene batteries, the idea was that this equipment would make his job – and therefore Greg - redundant, although he still has a connection as he has a graphene nanoshield permanently attached to his skull.
These different strands initially seem totally unconnected. This difference is also reflected in each section often having different styles of writing, with much (but not all!) of the Victorian/Edwardian passages written by Adler in the first person or in letters to Adler from Dolf. The future passages are written from the first-person perspective of Greg Ramsey.
As is now rather typical in a Priest book, readers may notice that there are themes and similarities running through the stories. Both the Becks and the Ramseys are twins, and anyone who has read Priest’s novel The Separation (2002) may feel that they’ve come across this idea of identical twins in his work before. It’s an interesting idea that this may create a bond that non-twins may not necessarily have - Heinlein also used this idea in his story A Time for the Stars (1956). Here, though, in each case one of the twins seems to be the model of conformity – a research professor, a police officer – whilst the other is more wayward.
As this is a Christopher Priest novel though, things are not always what we think they are. Christopher is a master writer, in setting out stories that are puzzles. They all sound perfectly sensible - this one begins with a real court case with photos to match, which adds a certain layer of reality to the plot, and adds to the mystique that what you’re reading is real or seems real.
What Christopher then does is lure you in with such reasonableness that you may not immediately realise that there are elements that that don’t always match up and that they’re actually unreliable narratives from unreliable narrators that mesh together in some places but not in others. Part of the fun of a Priest novel is deciding what is real and important and what is not, details that on their own seem quite logical, but then don’t.
Clearly on the pulse of current global concerns, Chris manages to convince the reader that his own research is impeccable. There’s a comprehensive bibliography at the back of the novel to show research should you wish to examine the scientific concepts of the novel further.
Descriptions of changes in climate, mini Ice Ages, glacial melting, ocean current changes and atmospheric conditions such as El Nino are all given here, and explained based on real scientific papers and data. (As a Geographer in my other life, I can say that Chris has managed to do that tricky thing of giving a depth of detailed information and understanding whilst at the same time moving the plot along without too much information dumping.)
In summary, Expect Me Tomorrow is never dull. It actually deals with current issues but in the unexpected way that only a skilled writer can achieve. It is by turns twisty and turny, but always mesmerising, with a satisfying conclusion that doesn’t entirely tie everything together but feels satisfyingly appropriate. Recommended.
*Actually that might be a misdirection – the clues are there, you just might not realise it!
March 29, 2023
I decided to read Expect Me Tomorrow as it looked like climate change sci-fi. The two protagonists are a mid-21st century former police profiler named Charles and his ancestor, a 19th century climate researcher named Adler. Their lives become connected when the former has weird technology implanted in his skull. I must say, although the technology itself was utterly implausible, the corporate bureaucracy around Charles acquiring it was very convincing.
Looking at climate change from two time periods, including the 19th century, was an intriguing choice. Adler’s researches appeared broadly consistent with what I read of historical climate research in The Discovery of Global Warming. Nonetheless, as a climate novel Expect Me Tomorrow didn’t have much of an impact. The narrow dual point of view and dispassionate narrative tone, including lots of infodumping, failed to viscerally convey the uncanny scale and uncontrollability of the climate. To be fair, very few authors manage this; I think Martin MacInnes is the best at it of any I know. The structure of reminded me of Adam Roberts scifi novels, although I find Roberts is better at creating tension. There just wasn’t a lot of that here. I also found the ending underwhelming to the point of seeming complacent.
I’ve now read four Christopher Priest novels and only really enjoyed The Prestige, perhaps because I liked the film. I appreciate his ideas much more than their execution, so probably won’t give any more of his books a try. The plot of Expect Me Tomorrow has a lot of potential but ultimately I was disappointed with it.
Looking at climate change from two time periods, including the 19th century, was an intriguing choice. Adler’s researches appeared broadly consistent with what I read of historical climate research in The Discovery of Global Warming. Nonetheless, as a climate novel Expect Me Tomorrow didn’t have much of an impact. The narrow dual point of view and dispassionate narrative tone, including lots of infodumping, failed to viscerally convey the uncanny scale and uncontrollability of the climate. To be fair, very few authors manage this; I think Martin MacInnes is the best at it of any I know. The structure of reminded me of Adam Roberts scifi novels, although I find Roberts is better at creating tension. There just wasn’t a lot of that here. I also found the ending underwhelming to the point of seeming complacent.
I’ve now read four Christopher Priest novels and only really enjoyed The Prestige, perhaps because I liked the film. I appreciate his ideas much more than their execution, so probably won’t give any more of his books a try. The plot of Expect Me Tomorrow has a lot of potential but ultimately I was disappointed with it.
April 28, 2024
En esa cruzada escéptica en la cual se embarcó Priest en (algunas de) sus últimas novelas, aquí entra en la emergencia climática de manera harto inteligente; no parte del negacionismo sino de la integración. A lo largo de la novela integra dos ideas básicas: el cambio climático de origen antropogénico existe y va a tener consecuencias devastadoras; y es posible un enfriamiento futuro debido a cambios en la circulación del agua en los mares o el ciclo solar. Para ello idea dos tramas separadas por dos siglos de distancia en las cuales pone varias búsquedas/investigaciones que terminan interrelacionadas, con unas conclusiones de una claridad sorprendente en el autor de La afirmación. En cierta forma, que Expect Me Tomorrow sea una novela de tesis (con varias), y que absolutamente todo esté orientado a validarlas, aleja el texto de algunas de las características que más valoro de su literatura. Los enigmas que se van resolviendo, lejos de ser transformadores, dejan el poso de algo muy concreto y específico, ya sugerido, con una finalidad más didáctica que narrativa.
Esto no quiere decir que Priest no sea persuasivo. Aunque el símil que establece entre las investigaciones criminales y las científicas no me parece del todo acertado, me gusta mucho cómo refleja el momento en el cual estamos y cómo la especificidad de ciertos estudios deja variables sin considerar que pueden tener su importancia para el panorama general. Esa faceta antidogmática, tenemos respuestas a lo que sucede pero las cosas pueden tomar un curso diferente si se desencadenan o tienen en cuenta otros acontecimientos, es lo que me llevo de la lectura de una obra menor pero fructífera.
Esto no quiere decir que Priest no sea persuasivo. Aunque el símil que establece entre las investigaciones criminales y las científicas no me parece del todo acertado, me gusta mucho cómo refleja el momento en el cual estamos y cómo la especificidad de ciertos estudios deja variables sin considerar que pueden tener su importancia para el panorama general. Esa faceta antidogmática, tenemos respuestas a lo que sucede pero las cosas pueden tomar un curso diferente si se desencadenan o tienen en cuenta otros acontecimientos, es lo que me llevo de la lectura de una obra menor pero fructífera.
November 29, 2022
1.5 stars, rounded up. I hate to rate it so low, as I never got to a point where I wanted to quit reading it. I did have reservations, but was interested to see where it was going, but the problem is that it did not come close to sticking the landing, so the overall experience must be judged accordingly.
Expect Me Tomorrow is another in a micro-genre that I keep running into surprisingly often (along with things like Maja Lunde's A History of Bees and Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land): a climate-themed interbraiding of multiple storylines across time. This book skips the present-day storyline of the other examples I mention, instead focusing on two main threads: one in the late 19th-very early 20th century, and another focusing on the year 2050 suffering from the effects of climate change.
In the past storyline, we follow Adler Beck, a glaciologist; in the future storyline, Chad Ramsey, a police profiler (and distant descendent of Adler Beck). Both men have a twin brother (Dolf and Greg; if the twin pairing is for a thematic reason, it was not clear to me), and this partially drives the interrelationship of the plotlines -- Dolf is a bit of a ne'er-do-well, and is several times (mistakenly) jailed for fraud (in what seems to be based directly on a real historical case of mistaken identity), while Greg, a reporter, is worried about his job as the news organization he works for is set to roll out bafflingly comprehensive background checks, in which the fuzzy family legend of "Uncle Adolf" the maybe-criminal may represent grounds for him not keeping his job.
Greg asks Chad to look into it for him, and when conventional genealogical investigations turn up no leads (because Dolf's nephew, Greg and Chad's direct ancestor, changed his surname after Dolf's convictions) Chad turns to an unexpected technological solution. Priest introduces two bits of future-tech here: "Instant Mental Communication," a neural weave of nanomaterial grafted into one's head (which Chad seems most excited to use for listening to music or watching movies, or occasionally for video chats); and the "DNA visualizer," a piece of tech that Priest is so uninterested in explaining that it borders on the magical. When combined with IMC, the visualizer allows Chad to literally inhabit the sensorium of whoever's DNA is being specified (who then experiences a sort of locked-in syndrome until Chad withdraws). Here we have the purpose of Adler and Dolf being twins, I suppose - due to their identical genome Chad sometimes pops into one of them, and sometimes the other, confusing his attempts to determine the truth of the prison stories (which basically consists of him barging into one of their minds and going "ADOLF RAMSEY? PRISON? TELL ME ABOUT PRISON," which you will be shocked to learn is not particularly effective anyway).
The climate piece of the story comes from Adler's research into the Gulf Stream, paralleled with Chad's encounter with some corporate research that suggests the same thing: that, greenhouse effect notwithstanding, the disruption of the Gulf Stream due to melting Arctic ice (plus a cyclical diminution of solar intensity) will actually result in a COLDER climate in the not-so-distant future. It's a new take on the "climate apocalypse" fiction I'm encountering lately, but I can't say I found it totally convincing (unlike Chad, who is lock-stock-and-barrel in on the idea because he's "following the scientific evidence"). Chad's research into this doesn't seem to serve much of any plot purpose, though, and seems totally in service of Christopher Priest having read a few books or papers suggesting it and wanting to build a book around it.
Likewise, neither does the Dolf Beck wrongful-conviction plotline. Again, it seems that Priest came across the historical case, thought it would be cool to put in a book, and just winged it (along with copious anachronism; see this excellent review for more detail). The two halves of the plot really do not cohere at all. For instance: partway through the book Greg leaves his job at the news organization whose background check prompted all this to begin with, leaving no reason to go time-traveling to get further details on the legend of "Uncle Adolf" (setting aside the many other issues with this plotline from a suspension-of-disbelief sense). Nevertheless, Chad continues to do research into it, even as his brother more than once reminds him that it's no longer necessary, and I was never convinced why he should. To satisfy his own curiosity, no doubt, but the story isn't interesting enough to me as a reader to want to be along for the ride.
All in all, a bit of an incoherent mess. As I see it, what value you get out of it will be in direct proportion to how interesting you find the two kernels of real-world information Priest has built it around, but unfortunately the framework he's built adds nothing.
Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette for the ARC.
Expect Me Tomorrow is another in a micro-genre that I keep running into surprisingly often (along with things like Maja Lunde's A History of Bees and Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land): a climate-themed interbraiding of multiple storylines across time. This book skips the present-day storyline of the other examples I mention, instead focusing on two main threads: one in the late 19th-very early 20th century, and another focusing on the year 2050 suffering from the effects of climate change.
In the past storyline, we follow Adler Beck, a glaciologist; in the future storyline, Chad Ramsey, a police profiler (and distant descendent of Adler Beck). Both men have a twin brother (Dolf and Greg; if the twin pairing is for a thematic reason, it was not clear to me), and this partially drives the interrelationship of the plotlines -- Dolf is a bit of a ne'er-do-well, and is several times (mistakenly) jailed for fraud (in what seems to be based directly on a real historical case of mistaken identity), while Greg, a reporter, is worried about his job as the news organization he works for is set to roll out bafflingly comprehensive background checks, in which the fuzzy family legend of "Uncle Adolf" the maybe-criminal may represent grounds for him not keeping his job.
Greg asks Chad to look into it for him, and when conventional genealogical investigations turn up no leads (because Dolf's nephew, Greg and Chad's direct ancestor, changed his surname after Dolf's convictions) Chad turns to an unexpected technological solution. Priest introduces two bits of future-tech here: "Instant Mental Communication," a neural weave of nanomaterial grafted into one's head (which Chad seems most excited to use for listening to music or watching movies, or occasionally for video chats); and the "DNA visualizer," a piece of tech that Priest is so uninterested in explaining that it borders on the magical. When combined with IMC, the visualizer allows Chad to literally inhabit the sensorium of whoever's DNA is being specified (who then experiences a sort of locked-in syndrome until Chad withdraws). Here we have the purpose of Adler and Dolf being twins, I suppose - due to their identical genome Chad sometimes pops into one of them, and sometimes the other, confusing his attempts to determine the truth of the prison stories (which basically consists of him barging into one of their minds and going "ADOLF RAMSEY? PRISON? TELL ME ABOUT PRISON," which you will be shocked to learn is not particularly effective anyway).
The climate piece of the story comes from Adler's research into the Gulf Stream, paralleled with Chad's encounter with some corporate research that suggests the same thing: that, greenhouse effect notwithstanding, the disruption of the Gulf Stream due to melting Arctic ice (plus a cyclical diminution of solar intensity) will actually result in a COLDER climate in the not-so-distant future. It's a new take on the "climate apocalypse" fiction I'm encountering lately, but I can't say I found it totally convincing (unlike Chad, who is lock-stock-and-barrel in on the idea because he's "following the scientific evidence"). Chad's research into this doesn't seem to serve much of any plot purpose, though, and seems totally in service of Christopher Priest having read a few books or papers suggesting it and wanting to build a book around it.
Likewise, neither does the Dolf Beck wrongful-conviction plotline. Again, it seems that Priest came across the historical case, thought it would be cool to put in a book, and just winged it (along with copious anachronism; see this excellent review for more detail). The two halves of the plot really do not cohere at all. For instance: partway through the book Greg leaves his job at the news organization whose background check prompted all this to begin with, leaving no reason to go time-traveling to get further details on the legend of "Uncle Adolf" (setting aside the many other issues with this plotline from a suspension-of-disbelief sense). Nevertheless, Chad continues to do research into it, even as his brother more than once reminds him that it's no longer necessary, and I was never convinced why he should. To satisfy his own curiosity, no doubt, but the story isn't interesting enough to me as a reader to want to be along for the ride.
All in all, a bit of an incoherent mess. As I see it, what value you get out of it will be in direct proportion to how interesting you find the two kernels of real-world information Priest has built it around, but unfortunately the framework he's built adds nothing.
Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette for the ARC.
September 15, 2022
Expect Me Tomorrow skirts the line between fact and fantasy to create a dazzling piece of speculative fiction that’ll stay with you long after the final page, and for all the right reasons.
I could talk about the characters — the Victorian glaciologist, the serial criminal, or the futuristic former police profiler. Each are authentic, and the incident with the 19th century swindler, John Smith, is true. It really happened. Having real events woven into the fabric of this story adds a prescience to it that’s really intriguing. But if I talk any more about the characters or their situations, it’ll spoil the way they intersect, and that’s half the fun, especially if you enjoy time-bending stories in the same ilk as the movie Frequency.
I could talk about the sumptuous prose and the era-capturing nuances of the writing. The past and future are imagined with such stark believability, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more realistic and grounded depiction of the 1800s alongside 2050 anywhere else. But it’s a Christopher Priest book. Of course it’s going to be clever and gripping and immersive. What else would you expect from the author of The Prestige?
So instead of dwelling on character, setting, or style, I’m going to focus on the crux on which this whole book hangs — hope. Hopeful science fiction is a treasure to be savoured. And this is one of those treasures.
Underneath the central mystery of the story (which crosses centuries and connects these characters), there’s an underlying reminder that hope remains, even when challenges seem insurmountable. Even if that challenge is climate change.
The issue of climate change is addressed here without ever feeling preachy, or reading like a scientific textbook — it’s skilfully included in a way that doesn’t detract from the story or the intrigue. But it’s there. In the background. Always lurking. And that’s because the book isn’t content to just give us a superficial mystery — it goes deeper with every page, and works on multiple levels. It’s artful, subtle, and while it might not be flashy, it’s got substance galore.
Actually, to say this book works on multiple levels is a bit of an understatement. Take the title, for example. The line ‘expect me tomorrow’ is uttered by every major player. Sometimes it refers to the criminal activity of John Smith. Sometimes it’s Dolf writing to his twin brother, Adler, in the hopes of seeing him. Sometimes it’s Chad making a promise to the past. But really, it’s the perfect message to depict the 2050s as they’re presented here — a future riddled by the devastating effects of a changed climate. Expect Me Tomorrow carries a warning of what our future holds. And yet, there’s something hopeful about the story which twists that threat into a comforting affirmation — that even in a condemned world, hope does not die.
Part of what makes this book hit home so well is the cleverness of how it’s structured. Each character is written in a different style. One is written in third-person-omniscient, one in third-person-limited, and one in first-person. This doesn’t feel confusing, and it doesn’t jar. Instead, it adds a sense of completeness to the narrative. The switches between time periods, characters, and style all flow and match seamlessly. It’s as if the story aims to look at every side of the bigger picture, to take every approach to the central world-changing issue at stake here, and this pays off in a big way because instead of feeling overwhelmed or unbalanced, every layer of the story lands. There’s so much to admire about it. Priest is a master at work, surpassing and subverting our expectations while leaving us stimulated and enchanted in equal measure.
On the cover of Expect Me Tomorrow is a glacier, and it’s perfect because the book is a lot like a glacier. It’s constantly shifting, powerfully balanced, and dangerously real. But it’s beautiful to behold, and when studied, it reveals a lot about who we are, where we are, but more importantly, where we’re going. The places this book will take you are well worth travelling. They might seem scary at first, but they’ll leave you with a sense of urgency that doesn’t rob you of your hope — rather, it adds to it. All these characters can give to one another is hope, but that’s all they need. And maybe, just maybe, hope is enough.
I could talk about the characters — the Victorian glaciologist, the serial criminal, or the futuristic former police profiler. Each are authentic, and the incident with the 19th century swindler, John Smith, is true. It really happened. Having real events woven into the fabric of this story adds a prescience to it that’s really intriguing. But if I talk any more about the characters or their situations, it’ll spoil the way they intersect, and that’s half the fun, especially if you enjoy time-bending stories in the same ilk as the movie Frequency.
I could talk about the sumptuous prose and the era-capturing nuances of the writing. The past and future are imagined with such stark believability, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more realistic and grounded depiction of the 1800s alongside 2050 anywhere else. But it’s a Christopher Priest book. Of course it’s going to be clever and gripping and immersive. What else would you expect from the author of The Prestige?
So instead of dwelling on character, setting, or style, I’m going to focus on the crux on which this whole book hangs — hope. Hopeful science fiction is a treasure to be savoured. And this is one of those treasures.
Underneath the central mystery of the story (which crosses centuries and connects these characters), there’s an underlying reminder that hope remains, even when challenges seem insurmountable. Even if that challenge is climate change.
The issue of climate change is addressed here without ever feeling preachy, or reading like a scientific textbook — it’s skilfully included in a way that doesn’t detract from the story or the intrigue. But it’s there. In the background. Always lurking. And that’s because the book isn’t content to just give us a superficial mystery — it goes deeper with every page, and works on multiple levels. It’s artful, subtle, and while it might not be flashy, it’s got substance galore.
Actually, to say this book works on multiple levels is a bit of an understatement. Take the title, for example. The line ‘expect me tomorrow’ is uttered by every major player. Sometimes it refers to the criminal activity of John Smith. Sometimes it’s Dolf writing to his twin brother, Adler, in the hopes of seeing him. Sometimes it’s Chad making a promise to the past. But really, it’s the perfect message to depict the 2050s as they’re presented here — a future riddled by the devastating effects of a changed climate. Expect Me Tomorrow carries a warning of what our future holds. And yet, there’s something hopeful about the story which twists that threat into a comforting affirmation — that even in a condemned world, hope does not die.
Part of what makes this book hit home so well is the cleverness of how it’s structured. Each character is written in a different style. One is written in third-person-omniscient, one in third-person-limited, and one in first-person. This doesn’t feel confusing, and it doesn’t jar. Instead, it adds a sense of completeness to the narrative. The switches between time periods, characters, and style all flow and match seamlessly. It’s as if the story aims to look at every side of the bigger picture, to take every approach to the central world-changing issue at stake here, and this pays off in a big way because instead of feeling overwhelmed or unbalanced, every layer of the story lands. There’s so much to admire about it. Priest is a master at work, surpassing and subverting our expectations while leaving us stimulated and enchanted in equal measure.
On the cover of Expect Me Tomorrow is a glacier, and it’s perfect because the book is a lot like a glacier. It’s constantly shifting, powerfully balanced, and dangerously real. But it’s beautiful to behold, and when studied, it reveals a lot about who we are, where we are, but more importantly, where we’re going. The places this book will take you are well worth travelling. They might seem scary at first, but they’ll leave you with a sense of urgency that doesn’t rob you of your hope — rather, it adds to it. All these characters can give to one another is hope, but that’s all they need. And maybe, just maybe, hope is enough.
May 3, 2025
Oh, sci-fi, why do I find it so hard to let you go? Friend and companion of my youth, you have nothing to offer me now, all these years later. And yet, the possibility of wonder beckons...
It's hard to believe I ever used to enjoy such pedestrian writing. It's painful to read. Priest's writing is all telling, in the most humdrum, quotidian way, which is meant (I suppose) to add verisimilitude. And wtf is up with his twins obsession? Some half-assed allusion to quantum entanglement, I suppose.
Got to page 90 and bailed.
It's hard to believe I ever used to enjoy such pedestrian writing. It's painful to read. Priest's writing is all telling, in the most humdrum, quotidian way, which is meant (I suppose) to add verisimilitude. And wtf is up with his twins obsession? Some half-assed allusion to quantum entanglement, I suppose.
Got to page 90 and bailed.
May 14, 2022
Another very « usual » Priest when it comes to pacing, style, and tone. This time, the author focuses on climate change and discusses in great details about the hopes and the nightmares. The overall experience is, as « usual », delicious and hypnotising, ending abruptly but in an emotional way.
February 10, 2023
This book really played games with me. In an age where science fiction is often either dystopian or hopeful, this book is kind of both and kind of neither. I felt like I never quite knew what the book was leading up to or why the story was moving in the direction it was. But rather than feeling frustrated, I always wanted a little more. It often felt like an "unreliable narrator" story, except that it wasn't a character that was unreliable so much as the plot itself. Every time I thought I had a grip of what was going on, it slipped into something else entirely.
Much of the history is based on real places and events. The bits about the crime read more like a non-fiction story about an interesting trial, complete with photos and examples of evidence. Likewise, the future chapters are well researched, though often painfully bleak. That said, it's bleak for a reason, and is not totally without hope.
This book really hits the mark in the "makes you think" category. The main characters seemed to affect one another's consciousness in ways that left me wondering about the story well after I finished reading it. However, I wasn't a fan of the sparse and often dry writing style, or the story's tendency to leave strange events unexplained. That's not to say it's poorly written; it represents the first-person perspectives of the characters, none of whom had a clear idea of what was going on. I don't always mind restrictive perspectives or sparse writing, but perhaps because I didn't care too much for the characters - I found them generally uninteresting - it was hard for me to embrace their perspectives. I always considered myself a "concept-driven" reader, but these days I need a character with some depth to them as well to really enjoy a book.
Much of the history is based on real places and events. The bits about the crime read more like a non-fiction story about an interesting trial, complete with photos and examples of evidence. Likewise, the future chapters are well researched, though often painfully bleak. That said, it's bleak for a reason, and is not totally without hope.
This book really hits the mark in the "makes you think" category. The main characters seemed to affect one another's consciousness in ways that left me wondering about the story well after I finished reading it. However, I wasn't a fan of the sparse and often dry writing style, or the story's tendency to leave strange events unexplained. That's not to say it's poorly written; it represents the first-person perspectives of the characters, none of whom had a clear idea of what was going on. I don't always mind restrictive perspectives or sparse writing, but perhaps because I didn't care too much for the characters - I found them generally uninteresting - it was hard for me to embrace their perspectives. I always considered myself a "concept-driven" reader, but these days I need a character with some depth to them as well to really enjoy a book.
January 2, 2025
Mr. Priest's style of writing has always been right up my alley. For me, he may be one of the best ever.
Reading a Priest novel is like purchasing four different Ravensburger puzzles and emptying the contents atop a large table and then placing them all neatly together at the end. An enjoyable task, but Priest, like puzzling, is not for everyone.
Below are some pieces to place together of the Expect Me Tomorrow puzzle.
Misdirection and Mis-narration.
1st and 3rd person viewpoints
We've got twins in this novel two. Like in The Separation and The Prestige.
A convoluted history of Adolf Beck, which was surprisingly interesting.
Time-lines from the late 1800s, leading to the 2050s
Climate change hypothesis and science with attached bibliographies
There're even some actual photos in the novel too.
It was interesting comparing his writing style of Inverted World, released in 1974. And, Expect Me Tomorrow, released in 2022.
Nearly fifty years of greatness. Thank you Mr. Priest.
Reading a Priest novel is like purchasing four different Ravensburger puzzles and emptying the contents atop a large table and then placing them all neatly together at the end. An enjoyable task, but Priest, like puzzling, is not for everyone.
Below are some pieces to place together of the Expect Me Tomorrow puzzle.
Misdirection and Mis-narration.
1st and 3rd person viewpoints
We've got twins in this novel two. Like in The Separation and The Prestige.
A convoluted history of Adolf Beck, which was surprisingly interesting.
Time-lines from the late 1800s, leading to the 2050s
Climate change hypothesis and science with attached bibliographies
There're even some actual photos in the novel too.
It was interesting comparing his writing style of Inverted World, released in 1974. And, Expect Me Tomorrow, released in 2022.
Nearly fifty years of greatness. Thank you Mr. Priest.
October 11, 2022
Compelling and intricate. Another exploration of illusion versus reality, twins and identity, truth versus fiction, this time set against themes of criminal justice and the climate crisis. Very well done, as usual for Priest.
July 3, 2024
I love Christopher Priest but this is just Wikipedia articles
May 2, 2022
J'ai beaucoup aimé
Un mix entre un polar psychologique et un roman de SF.
Le style est très beau
Quelques longueurs
Un mix entre un polar psychologique et un roman de SF.
Le style est très beau
Quelques longueurs
October 13, 2022
Not quite up there with The Inverted World and others but well worth reading.
February 19, 2024
This book is packed with clever ideas. Set in the 1800s and in 2050, the story swings back and forth between the different timeframes, as the lives of twins, Adler and Adolf Beck (1800s) and Chad and Greg Ramsey (2050) unfold within a common theme of speculation on climate change, which in the 2050 scenario, is very much a sweaty and uncomfortable reality. The theme is linked in both periods due to a connection with the study of glaciology.
Thanks to a sci-fi brain device, Chad in 2050 is able to communicate (much to their alarm) with the twin brothers in the earlier time period. In this way he discovers a tragic miscarriage of justice concerning the mistaken identity of Adolf.
The greatest strength of the book in my opinion is the very clear explanation of climate science regarding the AMOC (Atlantic Overturning Meriodonal Current) and how this is likely to come to a sudden halt due to billions of tons of freshwater pouring into the northern Atlantic from the Greenland ice shelf melt. Speculation on how the cooling effect of this will affect the heating planet becomes a central issue for both Adler and Chad. The fact that such speculation has been in the news very recently makes the book (published 2022) essential reading.
The brain device obviously requires some suspension of disbelief, but on the other hand who knows what technology might be available to us by 2050?
The novel is strangely flawed in some respects. This is the first novel by this author that I have read and as far as this book is concerned, Priest appeared to have an aversion to writing dialogue between a husband and wife, preferring reported speech to the immediacy of conversation. The women throughout remain shadowy and very much secondary characters. In the second half of the book there is a tendency for the author to resort to telling characters’ feelings rather than showing them, creating an unfortunate sense of distancing and detachment. There is one four-page scene of fairly prosaic reporting in which Chad and his wife Ingrid are travelling to Bergen which could have been cut altogether.
Nevertheless, this is an intelligent and very well-researched novel and the subject matter has never been more timely. At the end there is a bibliography of the books Priest used in his research and I will definitely be dipping into this.
Thanks to a sci-fi brain device, Chad in 2050 is able to communicate (much to their alarm) with the twin brothers in the earlier time period. In this way he discovers a tragic miscarriage of justice concerning the mistaken identity of Adolf.
The greatest strength of the book in my opinion is the very clear explanation of climate science regarding the AMOC (Atlantic Overturning Meriodonal Current) and how this is likely to come to a sudden halt due to billions of tons of freshwater pouring into the northern Atlantic from the Greenland ice shelf melt. Speculation on how the cooling effect of this will affect the heating planet becomes a central issue for both Adler and Chad. The fact that such speculation has been in the news very recently makes the book (published 2022) essential reading.
The brain device obviously requires some suspension of disbelief, but on the other hand who knows what technology might be available to us by 2050?
The novel is strangely flawed in some respects. This is the first novel by this author that I have read and as far as this book is concerned, Priest appeared to have an aversion to writing dialogue between a husband and wife, preferring reported speech to the immediacy of conversation. The women throughout remain shadowy and very much secondary characters. In the second half of the book there is a tendency for the author to resort to telling characters’ feelings rather than showing them, creating an unfortunate sense of distancing and detachment. There is one four-page scene of fairly prosaic reporting in which Chad and his wife Ingrid are travelling to Bergen which could have been cut altogether.
Nevertheless, this is an intelligent and very well-researched novel and the subject matter has never been more timely. At the end there is a bibliography of the books Priest used in his research and I will definitely be dipping into this.
January 7, 2023
Christopher Priest writes books that puzzle, bewilder, entice, and enthrall. He often uses twins (as Shakespeare did) as a device to confuse the participants as to who is whom. In this case, there are two sets of twins, separated by more than a hundred years in time, but connected through a fictional piece of communications technology.
Priest also has occasionally directed his focus on a major world topic, challenging the predominant narrative through fiction but with bibliographical support (in this book, a one-page bibliography at the end). In this book, the topic is climate change. The book's protagonists contend that the melting of the Greenland ice cap will stop the Gulf Stream, and since climate is largely controlled by the oceans, a new ice age will occur rather than the hothouse world we expect.
In a previous book, “An American Story”, the contention was that one of the conspiracy theories of the source of the 9/11 terrorism is true, and not the story that is commonly accepted.
Priest is a novelist, not a journalist, and it is unclear how much of this he himself believes. However, it is also unclear why he would devote so much effort into writing entire books about these issues if he didn't feel strongly about them.
Priest's books have always reveled in ambiguity, but were usually confined to the parameters within the book. Lately he seems to have directed his attention at alternative explanations of real-life events. These are not his strongest novels.
Priest also has occasionally directed his focus on a major world topic, challenging the predominant narrative through fiction but with bibliographical support (in this book, a one-page bibliography at the end). In this book, the topic is climate change. The book's protagonists contend that the melting of the Greenland ice cap will stop the Gulf Stream, and since climate is largely controlled by the oceans, a new ice age will occur rather than the hothouse world we expect.
In a previous book, “An American Story”, the contention was that one of the conspiracy theories of the source of the 9/11 terrorism is true, and not the story that is commonly accepted.
Priest is a novelist, not a journalist, and it is unclear how much of this he himself believes. However, it is also unclear why he would devote so much effort into writing entire books about these issues if he didn't feel strongly about them.
Priest's books have always reveled in ambiguity, but were usually confined to the parameters within the book. Lately he seems to have directed his attention at alternative explanations of real-life events. These are not his strongest novels.
October 15, 2022
Naturally without the aliens, this nonetheless had a feeling of Eifelheim about it and I soaked up every page and nuance. it felt more alive and vivid the further back in time you went, and I suppose that's partly intentional with the future so bleak and miserable.
Totally enjoyed start to finish, very much my sort of thing.
Totally enjoyed start to finish, very much my sort of thing.
January 9, 2023
A mystery across time. A look at a climatically dystopian future and contains the frequent trope of Priest books relating to twins. Engaging read that maintained my interest and never lost the thread of intrigue. Definitely an improvement over The Evidence.
March 18, 2023
This was a quick read, largely because the writing style was concise and straightforward. The story was interesting but quite dense scientifically, so i was bored at some points. I liked the time travel aspect and the intersecting storylines, as well as the portrayal of 2050 that felt true to life.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 30, 2023
Started today, Oct 13th. First impression: not a usual Priest novel.
Finished today, Dec 29th, over a year later!
First time round, I didn't connect immediately with the book, put it down, forgot it...and found it again a few days ago. In some ways, my first impression was wrong. It is very Priestly, beautifully written, with three-dimensional characters, set in two well described times, one past, one near-future.
No one describes place and time better than Priest.
It's all about climate change. Global warming. Or is it global cooling? The 19th century scientist thinks the latter, and writes a book warning of the danger of the ice-age to come. As always with Priest, the science is plausible and authoritative.
The people in 2050 are already living in a time of global heating (not 'warming'), and Priest describes the awfulness of living in Hastings, which is close to being abandoned. But there is hope, too. Perhaps there is some cooling happening, in the depths of the ocean, and the glaciers of Norway. Perhaps some of the world will come through the crisis, after all. Perhaps even Britain will (but probably not Hastings).
The two eras are linked by some weird mumbo-jumbo science, with a message from 2050 getting passed one hundred and fifty years down time. Good effort, Mr Priest, but it is not really plausible, and the reason you have got just four stars from me, this time.
There are also twins, but no conjuring tricks, and no Spitfires. A really enjoyable read, though, thought provoking as well as fun.
Finished today, Dec 29th, over a year later!
First time round, I didn't connect immediately with the book, put it down, forgot it...and found it again a few days ago. In some ways, my first impression was wrong. It is very Priestly, beautifully written, with three-dimensional characters, set in two well described times, one past, one near-future.
No one describes place and time better than Priest.
It's all about climate change. Global warming. Or is it global cooling? The 19th century scientist thinks the latter, and writes a book warning of the danger of the ice-age to come. As always with Priest, the science is plausible and authoritative.
The people in 2050 are already living in a time of global heating (not 'warming'), and Priest describes the awfulness of living in Hastings, which is close to being abandoned. But there is hope, too. Perhaps there is some cooling happening, in the depths of the ocean, and the glaciers of Norway. Perhaps some of the world will come through the crisis, after all. Perhaps even Britain will (but probably not Hastings).
The two eras are linked by some weird mumbo-jumbo science, with a message from 2050 getting passed one hundred and fifty years down time. Good effort, Mr Priest, but it is not really plausible, and the reason you have got just four stars from me, this time.
There are also twins, but no conjuring tricks, and no Spitfires. A really enjoyable read, though, thought provoking as well as fun.
August 12, 2023
[3.5 stars] If you're unfamiliar with Christopher Priest, you'll probably want to start with one of his older novels, which I think are a little more accessible than his more recent work. That said, I think that this novel is a worthy entry into the author's oeuvre. Expect Me Tomorrow is an enigmatic but carefully constructed puzzle of a novel that hints throughout at deeper resonance between seemingly disparate parts, but never quite spells out how the reader ought to interpret it. Nor does it resolve all of its own questions.
In this case, the elements and themes include twin brothers (a longstanding fascination of Priest's), mistaken identity, two timelines that seem to influence each other (see also The Separation), an unlikely technological whatsamadoozy, and an encroaching climate catastrophe (which has been making itself quite visible in the year I write this). Quite a few balls to juggle, but juggle them Priest does, and in a way I found largely convincing. Certainly, I was sold on his characters and their experiences and concerns, as I usually am.
The plot centers around two story lines, one taking place in the late 19th century and the other in a semi-fractured Britain of the year 2050, where a degrading climate and immense political instability arising from it are both unwelcome intrusions into daily life. In the former story line, a glaciologist named Adler Beck has become convinced of a forthcoming ice age that he believes will strike towards the end of the 20th century. At the same time, his wayward libertine of a twin brother, named Adolf, has fallen into legal jeopardy for alleged crimes of fraud, which Adler believes his twin to be innocent of. (In fact, Adolf Beck was a real person whose case attracted significant interest at the time, but read the novel first and look him up on wikipedia later.) Both of these twins experience occasional mental intrusions from a mysterious, seemingly confused stranger, but are unsure of what to make of these anomalous events. At least, not until Adler, the more level-headed of the two, decides to take a rational approach to finding out who and what the visitor is.
The intruder, of course, is Charles, a descendant of the Becks who was born in 2002. Charles works as a "profiler" for the police in 2050, taking a data-driven approach to solving crimes, but finds his career on less and less solid footing in an increasingly authoritarian Britain. He's fitted with a futuristic gadget called an IMC, a skull-embedded device that enables an almost telepathic connection between users, as well as enhanced internet access. Charles also has a twin brother, a journalist named Gregory, who has long been interested in their long-ago relative, Adolf. After being laid off from his job, and acting on Gregory's behest, Charles decides to use his IMC to investigate Adolf, which somehow opens the semi-controllable mental connection between himself and the 19th century brothers. Soon, their minds and emotions are bleeding into one another's. As their stories must also do from a thematic point of view, given the intriguing parallels that Priest has written into them.
The two main layers of the novel concern the question of Adolf's innocence, and the question of whether there might be reprieve from a sentence of climate doom. This comes into play when Charles is recruited by a multinational corporation that claims to have found evidence that climate change will soon reverse itself. This corporation hopes that Charles will employ his profiling skills to demonstrate that they might be right. What will Charles do? What is RIGHT? How will his conversations with Adler affect his decision? Even with half an hour left to the audiobook, I was in suspense as to how it would all conclude.
This is hardly a perfect novel. Even as a certified Christopher Priest fan, I was frustrated with his apparent cluelessness about computer technology, though hardly unusual in a Baby Boomer. His vision of how people interact with and think about the spiderweb of technology that surrounds us is dated even for 2022, never mind 2050. He doesn't seem to realize that even conservative-minded institutions like the police are already becoming pretty comfortable with all things cyber. (And in ways that people around the world will increasingly find themselves on the boot-stomping end of.)
Overall, though, I liked Expect Me Tomorrow. As can be expected from a Priest novel, this one doesn't arrive at a neat, satisfying solution to today's climate worries (which would be impossible), but seems to find hope in the very uncertainty of human calculation and consensus. The ending, while ambiguous, landed for me on an emotional level. What if we could speak to people caught in the gears of history from some future vantage point? What could we teach them? What could we learn from their experience?
Having read The Glamour, still my favorite work by Christoper Priest, I'm primed to think that there's an alternate interpretation to the story's events hiding in plain sight, but I won't share my theory on that. (Happy to discuss, with appropriate "spoiler" tags, in the comments, if anyone who has finished the book wants to.)
In this case, the elements and themes include twin brothers (a longstanding fascination of Priest's), mistaken identity, two timelines that seem to influence each other (see also The Separation), an unlikely technological whatsamadoozy, and an encroaching climate catastrophe (which has been making itself quite visible in the year I write this). Quite a few balls to juggle, but juggle them Priest does, and in a way I found largely convincing. Certainly, I was sold on his characters and their experiences and concerns, as I usually am.
The plot centers around two story lines, one taking place in the late 19th century and the other in a semi-fractured Britain of the year 2050, where a degrading climate and immense political instability arising from it are both unwelcome intrusions into daily life. In the former story line, a glaciologist named Adler Beck has become convinced of a forthcoming ice age that he believes will strike towards the end of the 20th century. At the same time, his wayward libertine of a twin brother, named Adolf, has fallen into legal jeopardy for alleged crimes of fraud, which Adler believes his twin to be innocent of. (In fact, Adolf Beck was a real person whose case attracted significant interest at the time, but read the novel first and look him up on wikipedia later.) Both of these twins experience occasional mental intrusions from a mysterious, seemingly confused stranger, but are unsure of what to make of these anomalous events. At least, not until Adler, the more level-headed of the two, decides to take a rational approach to finding out who and what the visitor is.
The intruder, of course, is Charles, a descendant of the Becks who was born in 2002. Charles works as a "profiler" for the police in 2050, taking a data-driven approach to solving crimes, but finds his career on less and less solid footing in an increasingly authoritarian Britain. He's fitted with a futuristic gadget called an IMC, a skull-embedded device that enables an almost telepathic connection between users, as well as enhanced internet access. Charles also has a twin brother, a journalist named Gregory, who has long been interested in their long-ago relative, Adolf. After being laid off from his job, and acting on Gregory's behest, Charles decides to use his IMC to investigate Adolf, which somehow opens the semi-controllable mental connection between himself and the 19th century brothers. Soon, their minds and emotions are bleeding into one another's. As their stories must also do from a thematic point of view, given the intriguing parallels that Priest has written into them.
The two main layers of the novel concern the question of Adolf's innocence, and the question of whether there might be reprieve from a sentence of climate doom. This comes into play when Charles is recruited by a multinational corporation that claims to have found evidence that climate change will soon reverse itself. This corporation hopes that Charles will employ his profiling skills to demonstrate that they might be right. What will Charles do? What is RIGHT? How will his conversations with Adler affect his decision? Even with half an hour left to the audiobook, I was in suspense as to how it would all conclude.
This is hardly a perfect novel. Even as a certified Christopher Priest fan, I was frustrated with his apparent cluelessness about computer technology, though hardly unusual in a Baby Boomer. His vision of how people interact with and think about the spiderweb of technology that surrounds us is dated even for 2022, never mind 2050. He doesn't seem to realize that even conservative-minded institutions like the police are already becoming pretty comfortable with all things cyber. (And in ways that people around the world will increasingly find themselves on the boot-stomping end of.)
Overall, though, I liked Expect Me Tomorrow. As can be expected from a Priest novel, this one doesn't arrive at a neat, satisfying solution to today's climate worries (which would be impossible), but seems to find hope in the very uncertainty of human calculation and consensus. The ending, while ambiguous, landed for me on an emotional level. What if we could speak to people caught in the gears of history from some future vantage point? What could we teach them? What could we learn from their experience?
Having read The Glamour, still my favorite work by Christoper Priest, I'm primed to think that there's an alternate interpretation to the story's events hiding in plain sight, but I won't share my theory on that. (Happy to discuss, with appropriate "spoiler" tags, in the comments, if anyone who has finished the book wants to.)
March 5, 2023
A slog - dare I say “glacial”?
June 9, 2023
Clever concept story meshing climate change and AI. Read it and weep?
April 11, 2025
A worse version of the prestige. Also, what is the point of this book? That global warming is overrated?
November 22, 2024
Way too much exposition, and parallel narrative threads that really didn't go anywhere.
November 9, 2022
It’s difficult, so very difficult, to explain why you don’t love the book that is so obviously good. I’ll try, anyway.
Expect Me Tomorrow is my first read by the author, though I absolutely loved the cinematic adaptation of his movie Prestige. Granted, some of that love might have had to do with it being about magicians (one of my favorite subjects) and he fact that it was simply a very well-made movie, but still…
So, that’s what made me aware of Priest, and when this, his latest novel, came up on Netgalley, featuring more twins and alternative timelines and science, I figured it was time to check him out.
Well, ok, I did. Took days to get through – unusual for me. And for a book not much over 300 pages.
There’s so much good within these pages, too. Priest has really crammed it with plots and subplots and information. The latter of which might have been the novel’s downfall for me.
Downfall’s too dramatic, though; more like a lamentable detractor.
There’s a paragraph or two toward the end where one of the characters described the book by another as heavy going and too loaded with detail or something like that, and it’s exactly my opinion of this novel.
For all the ingenious interwoven structure of the plot, for all its clever use of utilizing a dramatized version of an old true crime case, for how well it alternates between historical and futuristic fiction, for all of its prescient timely message about the climate…it is so freaking heavy going, dense, and minutely detailed that it’s kind of a slog to read.
The climate message particularly is very heavy-handed here. In both timelines. The first protagonist is a climatologist from late 1800s/early 1900s; the second is a police consultant enhanced by experimental technology who gets involve in analyzing and creating a climate report.
The trick (well, one of them) is that the latter is a descendant of the former, and through his new tech device he traces his relative in time and contacts him.
The irony is that climatologist of yore wasn’t paid much attention to because the science was too new and too experimental, and in 2050, similar reports are ignored or dismissed as alarmist, because people are simply too stupid and self-involved to understand and appreciate them.
Priest, though, pays attention. It’s obvious that a tremendous amount of research went into writing this novel, but that is also responsible for all the times it seemingly turns from fiction into a climate change documentary.
Mind you, I’m all for it. This is a significant hugely important subject, and it should be taught, discussed, etc. but…maybe not to this extent in a fictional novel?
It’s frustrating, really, because the novel is otherwise so well composed and written. Priest is obviously a very talented author and storyteller, and this novel of yesterday and tomorrow demonstrates it amply. But it weighs itself down with an anchor as heavy as it is well-meaning.
So didn’t’ quite work for me. User mileage may vary. Thanks Netgalley.
This and more at https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/
Expect Me Tomorrow is my first read by the author, though I absolutely loved the cinematic adaptation of his movie Prestige. Granted, some of that love might have had to do with it being about magicians (one of my favorite subjects) and he fact that it was simply a very well-made movie, but still…
So, that’s what made me aware of Priest, and when this, his latest novel, came up on Netgalley, featuring more twins and alternative timelines and science, I figured it was time to check him out.
Well, ok, I did. Took days to get through – unusual for me. And for a book not much over 300 pages.
There’s so much good within these pages, too. Priest has really crammed it with plots and subplots and information. The latter of which might have been the novel’s downfall for me.
Downfall’s too dramatic, though; more like a lamentable detractor.
There’s a paragraph or two toward the end where one of the characters described the book by another as heavy going and too loaded with detail or something like that, and it’s exactly my opinion of this novel.
For all the ingenious interwoven structure of the plot, for all its clever use of utilizing a dramatized version of an old true crime case, for how well it alternates between historical and futuristic fiction, for all of its prescient timely message about the climate…it is so freaking heavy going, dense, and minutely detailed that it’s kind of a slog to read.
The climate message particularly is very heavy-handed here. In both timelines. The first protagonist is a climatologist from late 1800s/early 1900s; the second is a police consultant enhanced by experimental technology who gets involve in analyzing and creating a climate report.
The trick (well, one of them) is that the latter is a descendant of the former, and through his new tech device he traces his relative in time and contacts him.
The irony is that climatologist of yore wasn’t paid much attention to because the science was too new and too experimental, and in 2050, similar reports are ignored or dismissed as alarmist, because people are simply too stupid and self-involved to understand and appreciate them.
Priest, though, pays attention. It’s obvious that a tremendous amount of research went into writing this novel, but that is also responsible for all the times it seemingly turns from fiction into a climate change documentary.
Mind you, I’m all for it. This is a significant hugely important subject, and it should be taught, discussed, etc. but…maybe not to this extent in a fictional novel?
It’s frustrating, really, because the novel is otherwise so well composed and written. Priest is obviously a very talented author and storyteller, and this novel of yesterday and tomorrow demonstrates it amply. But it weighs itself down with an anchor as heavy as it is well-meaning.
So didn’t’ quite work for me. User mileage may vary. Thanks Netgalley.
This and more at https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/
March 18, 2023
The premise of this book is brilliant. Climate catastrophe braided with time travel, laced with dollops of science (historical, geological and climatological sources all listed in a bibliography). A mistrial that actually happened in England in the late 19th and early 20th century plus a Victorian researcher into glaciers and Cassandra of a climate change in the form of a new ice age plus a profiler, digging through archives and evidence in 2050 Hastings.
The vision of the future is also brilliant. I found myself thinking about it as I walked the dog. It feels very real, rooted in the present day, with spare doses of making-strange (the British dollar, the UN in Bergen) and a wonderful mind-meld/ computer-gaming invention that lends just a touch of Orwellian / Gibsonian eerieness. This is excellent world-building.
What is not so excellent, to me at any rate, is the prose. Some of the book is, in fact, a take on true crime, and the book exhibits the kind of factual, staccato, objective, zero-focalised prose style that I dislike intensely. Even strong emotions are described in this factual, distanced prose, and it leaves me, too, factual and distanced. By the end of the novel, I sort of empathised with some of the characters but it took a long time, and half-way through I played with DNF'ing. I guess the style sort of grew on me by the end but it doesn't attain the clarity of post-modern pastiche of such a style nor does it grow out of individuals' voices. Each of the three main pov-characters shares this factual voice. At the start of the book, I thought it was the quirk of one of the men (and yes, this is a rather man-centred book; beware the all-male bibliography, for one) and enjoyed the prose for that reason but when it transpired that each person had this same voice, I found the style grating.
So: a mixed bag! Read it for the climate stuff, though. That bit is chilling. And interesting. I learned that the greenhouse effect can result in a new ice age which makes sense once you read it. Whatever happens, we're basically f***d, though.
Read for the 52bookclub reading challenge of 2023. Prompt: Time in the title. The Kindle format is OK but a bit dumb (who needs chapter heading links? inadvertently tapping one of those whooshes you to the TOC page -- but do publishers not realise that the Kindle technology has a built-in TOC system? Shakin' m' head.)
The vision of the future is also brilliant. I found myself thinking about it as I walked the dog. It feels very real, rooted in the present day, with spare doses of making-strange (the British dollar, the UN in Bergen) and a wonderful mind-meld/ computer-gaming invention that lends just a touch of Orwellian / Gibsonian eerieness. This is excellent world-building.
What is not so excellent, to me at any rate, is the prose. Some of the book is, in fact, a take on true crime, and the book exhibits the kind of factual, staccato, objective, zero-focalised prose style that I dislike intensely. Even strong emotions are described in this factual, distanced prose, and it leaves me, too, factual and distanced. By the end of the novel, I sort of empathised with some of the characters but it took a long time, and half-way through I played with DNF'ing. I guess the style sort of grew on me by the end but it doesn't attain the clarity of post-modern pastiche of such a style nor does it grow out of individuals' voices. Each of the three main pov-characters shares this factual voice. At the start of the book, I thought it was the quirk of one of the men (and yes, this is a rather man-centred book; beware the all-male bibliography, for one) and enjoyed the prose for that reason but when it transpired that each person had this same voice, I found the style grating.
So: a mixed bag! Read it for the climate stuff, though. That bit is chilling. And interesting. I learned that the greenhouse effect can result in a new ice age which makes sense once you read it. Whatever happens, we're basically f***d, though.
Read for the 52bookclub reading challenge of 2023. Prompt: Time in the title. The Kindle format is OK but a bit dumb (who needs chapter heading links? inadvertently tapping one of those whooshes you to the TOC page -- but do publishers not realise that the Kindle technology has a built-in TOC system? Shakin' m' head.)
September 29, 2025
Gosh. I've liked several CPriests in the past, but gosh. This one actually made me angry.
First, Priest has done a Neal Stephenson: gather some research, jam ALL of it into a book, and see if you can write a plot around it.
Second, the Scifi is dreadful nonsense 2050 is plausibly different from today in terms of climate and politics, but that's just extrapolation. They appear to rely on 1980 computer systems to do email. But yer man has a mesh squiggled into his head (permanently, when they know they're going to fire him???) and suddenly he can get e-mail. That's OK. But his buddies Pat and the other bloke? Gyro Gearloose lives! Give Chad a name and date, and we'll search the DNA database [which has everyone in the world, EVEN PEOPLE FROM THE PAST when DNA was unheard of and there was no earthly reason to keep anyone's underpants for 200 years, and if there were they'd have been lost 150 years ago] and suddenly this head mesh lets Chad mindmeld because the DNA sample in the database has installed a cross-time modem that allows for the fact that the earth is zillions of km from where it was then unless the concept of distance doesn't apply inside the chronosynclastic infundibulum of spacetime, because twins.
And I was never convinced why he wanted to look up his alleged uncle.
And there's Ingrid, whose entire purpose in the book is to get Chad to Norway for the big ending, which turned out to be a damp squib. Or Meredith, who is there to, ah, um, er. Big fail on the Bechdel test.
And of course the repeated "Dorf? Is that you?" which should have led after the 4th time to a German- or Norwegian-accented "Get der &(^$% out of my head you pervo!"
For an author who has written quite a bit of very good SF, this feels like a mainstream author trying to spread into SF.
I don't doubt that the lit'ry things the five-star reviewers drooled over are there. I'm just not looking for that kind of book. Libraries need a new category "Looks like SF but isn't really." Also a label that says "contains a very long lecture on climate change."
First, Priest has done a Neal Stephenson: gather some research, jam ALL of it into a book, and see if you can write a plot around it.
Second, the Scifi is dreadful nonsense 2050 is plausibly different from today in terms of climate and politics, but that's just extrapolation. They appear to rely on 1980 computer systems to do email. But yer man has a mesh squiggled into his head (permanently, when they know they're going to fire him???) and suddenly he can get e-mail. That's OK. But his buddies Pat and the other bloke? Gyro Gearloose lives! Give Chad a name and date, and we'll search the DNA database [which has everyone in the world, EVEN PEOPLE FROM THE PAST when DNA was unheard of and there was no earthly reason to keep anyone's underpants for 200 years, and if there were they'd have been lost 150 years ago] and suddenly this head mesh lets Chad mindmeld because the DNA sample in the database has installed a cross-time modem that allows for the fact that the earth is zillions of km from where it was then unless the concept of distance doesn't apply inside the chronosynclastic infundibulum of spacetime, because twins.
And I was never convinced why he wanted to look up his alleged uncle.
And there's Ingrid, whose entire purpose in the book is to get Chad to Norway for the big ending, which turned out to be a damp squib. Or Meredith, who is there to, ah, um, er. Big fail on the Bechdel test.
And of course the repeated "Dorf? Is that you?" which should have led after the 4th time to a German- or Norwegian-accented "Get der &(^$% out of my head you pervo!"
For an author who has written quite a bit of very good SF, this feels like a mainstream author trying to spread into SF.
I don't doubt that the lit'ry things the five-star reviewers drooled over are there. I'm just not looking for that kind of book. Libraries need a new category "Looks like SF but isn't really." Also a label that says "contains a very long lecture on climate change."
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