Time Travel discussion

Join us to discuss the popular debut from Elan Mastai. All Our Wrong Todays won awards in 2017 and 2018.

Our discussion leader is Glynn.

I'll start us off with just one question.
Glynn, why did you choose this to nominate?
Voters, why did you vote for this?

Lol, Cheryl, that's 2 questions!

Anyway, I nominated this one because we hadn't read it as a group and the Goodreads writeup sounded interesting and fun. I had no idea it would be the most voted for book. I am hoping others will chime in about this book.

I finished this book prior to this discussion. I have to say I didn't like it much. Anybody read this previously and if so what did you think? Remember to put spoiler formatting when appropriate. Thanks!

Well, it's one question depending on askee! :)

I admit that I only gave it two stars myself. But I'd rather not go into specifics right now. Clearly it appeals to lots of people somehow.... I agree, let's see what others say.

I really liked it. I loved his use of language and the imagery he was able to envoke. I also identified with the underachieving protagonist who never quite lives up to his potential.

It's not the best story I've ever read, but I've read it three times now, so I must like it.

You make it sound good, Jillian. Maybe I got hung up on the underachieving protagonist... I suspect I like my MC's to be more heroic or at least successful.

Maybe I will try again!

Anyone wonder what happened to the bright future we were supposed to have? I visited the '64 Worlds Fair as a kid and everything was about amazing technologies that would transform our lives in the next 10 years or so. Didn't happen.

Glynn wrote: "Anyone wonder what happened to the bright future we were supposed to have? I visited the '64 Worlds Fair as a kid and everything was about amazing technologies that would transform our lives in the..."

"Bright Future" means different things to every individual.

Sure, we all have different priorities, but where's my jet pack? Where's cold fusion?

In a future reduced to searching for entertainment, who's building all the fantastical buildings? And why?

Good question... but are you talking about the future that we're experiencing irl, or the one in the book?

In Chapter 103, Tom (or his sister?) says that "..for every leap in technology the world gets more sour and chaotic..." Do you believe this to be true?

Ooh... good question. It's certainly true in some cases. But "every" is much too strong a word, in my opinion.

The internet has certainly done a lot to ease chaos in a lot of areas of my life, for example. It's less sour to submit the 1040 to the IRS online than it is to wrestle with dead-tree forms, for most people, I think.

Cheryl wrote: "Ooh... good question. It's certainly true in some cases. But "every" is much too strong a word, in my opinion.

The internet has certainly done a lot to ease chaos in a lot of areas of my life, fo..."

Yes, for me too. My wife, though, struggles with technology. She still has a flip phone!

Cheryl wrote: "Good question... but are you talking about the future that we're experiencing irl, or the one in the book?"
The future depicted early in the book. Who is working anymore? Why? Are these office buildings? Apartment buildings? If everyone is concentrating on entertainment, is there an unobserved worker class who is not focused on entertainment? Are there people whose greatest desire was to be a construction laborer? I wonder, because I am an architect and I read about things like this and wonder if people understand how buildings are designed and built and why. Sorry, but I stumble over people's ideas of architects, not just in this story but in many (Patricia Hightower's "Strangers on a Train" is a good example.) His alternate life/meteoric rise to fame as a 33 year-old architect, with a resume' of impressive projects as long as your arm, is massively unrealistic unless he left graduate school when he was 10. Just a pet peeve that takes me out of the story. Write what you know.

Steven wrote: "Cheryl wrote: "Good question... but are you talking about the future that we're experiencing irl, or the one in the book?"
The future depicted early in the book. Who is working anymore? Why? Are th..."

This is great, thank you Steven. I was thinking that if everyone is focused on "entertainment" then those that choose to build the fantastical places and those that choose to live in them do it beause they are "entertained" by doing that. It's a flimsy explanation and doesn't obviously hold up in the real world.

Speaking of entertainment, I read that Seth McFarlane (Family Guy, The Orville, etc.) is developing a tv adaptation of the book

Glynn wrote: "Steven wrote: "Cheryl wrote: "Good question... but are you talking about the future that we're experiencing irl, or the one in the book?"
The future depicted early in the book. Who is working anymo..."
It's been decades since I read it, but weren't the Morlocks in HG Wells "The Time Machine" a sort of worker underclass who made life possible for whoever the other guys were?

Steven wrote: "In a future reduced to searching for entertainment, who's building all the fantastical buildings? And why?"
Good questions. The book doesn't really suggest it but I suppose it's possible that the building process is fully automated-everything built by robots and AI (including mining and robot building etc).

People would design such things for entertainment though, as all the free open source work done shows, and also the hours people spend world building in imaginary digital worlds (sometimes paying for the privilege!).
Pretty sure that just having an endless energy producing machine wouldn't fix all of the economic and political issues which would stand in the way of that happening mind you, even if technically feasible.

Brett wrote: "Steven wrote: "In a future reduced to searching for entertainment, who's building all the fantastical buildings? And why?"
Good questions. The book doesn't really suggest it but I suppose it's poss..."
Construction bots! Of course! One thing I've started wondering is why do imagined futures have to be either dystopian or utopian? Don't we live in a version of a utopia envisioned in the past? Probably in some ways, we do, yet our world today doesn't seem forced when looking backward. The future described in All Our Wrong Todays seems unlikely to develop simply from elimination of energy needs. However, I think dystopian futures are probably easier to write because utopian ones always sound so contrived. Like this one.

Steven wrote: "Brett wrote: "Steven wrote: "In a future reduced to searching for entertainment, who's building all the fantastical buildings? And why?"
Good questions. The book doesn't really suggest it but I sup..."
It would be nice to see more imagined futures be about a different mix of utopia and dystopia than we live in today, rather than one or the other.

If the future isn't surprising, what good is it?

As to dystopian versus utopian futures, if I'm going to spend one year writing the first draft of a science fiction novel, I'm going to write whatever future is the most fun for me to live through while I am writing it.

I basically write the book I can't find anywhere to read. And it surprises me, because the default plot changes and improves while I am writing it.

Writing the first draft of a novel I am excited about is the most fun I can have.

Agree with you entirely. Very well put.

Glynn wrote: "Anyone wonder what happened to the bright future we were supposed to have? I visited the '64 Worlds Fair as a kid and everything was about amazing technologies that would transform our lives in the..."

It's a Small World Happened. I saw it there for the first time.

I think it was Buzz Aldrin who said: They promised us the Moon, we got Facebook and Twitter.