You know the future that people in the 1950s imagined we'd have? Well, it happened. In Tom Barren's 2016, humanity thrives in a techno-utopian paradise of flying cars, moving sidewalks, and moon bases, where avocados never go bad and punk rock never existed . . . because it wasn't necessary.
Except Tom just can't seem to find his place in this dazzling, idealistic world, and that's before his life gets turned upside down. Utterly blindsided by an accident of fate, Tom makes a rash decision that drastically changes not only his own life but the very fabric of the universe itself. In a time-travel mishap, Tom finds himself stranded in our 2016, what we think of as the real world. For Tom, our normal reality seems like a dystopian wasteland.
But when he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career, and—maybe, just maybe—his soul mate, Tom has a decision to make. Does he fix the flow of history, bringing his utopian universe back into existence, or does he try to forge a new life in our messy, unpredictable reality? Tom’s search for the answer takes him across countries, continents, and timelines in a quest to figure out, finally, who he really is and what his future—our future—is supposed to be.
This book reminded me a bit of Doctor Who meets Back to the Future, with a lot of The Jetsons thrown in there as well. Time travel and dystopia/utopia are two very interesting subjects to me, and I really found the concept of this book to be intriguing. An added benefit, it takes place in Toronto, and is done in a way that it's actually Toronto, and not "fictional Toronto". A lot of people have compared this book to Blake Crouch's spectacular novel Dark Matter, which I can see to an extent, but this one is more comedic, whereas Dark Matter was more intense and gritty.
This is the first book of Elan Matsai, who is a screenwriter. He wrote the screenplay for one of my favourite movies, The F-Word, so I was excited to see what his novel-writing skills were like. The writing style is very slick and easy to follow. It's a very engaging book stylistically speaking. The opening sentence draws you in almost instantaneously. Oddly enough, this reminded me of The Jetsons, as I mentioned. While it was an interesting concept, and the writing style was really strong, this book did fall flat in some areas for me, which detracted some from it.
I enjoyed the first half of this book a lot more than the second half. I didn't really feel the stakes in this book. I think that was partly because I didn't connect to the main character Tom/John or any of the other characters in either reality. Most of the supporting characters are very flimsy and just there to fulfill the plot and the overall conflict. If the plot hadn't jumped around as much as it did, focused a bit more on the characters, and clearly defined both iterations of Tom/John Barren, I would have liked this book more than I did.
All in all, this is a good, not great book. It's easy to read, and Elan Matsai has a great writing style. It's an enjoyable enough book, but the stakes were not there for me, and I didn't really care much for the main protagonist as much as I should have. The first half of All Our Wrong Todays was the stronger half by far. It plays well with the idea of present and future and how small things can change everything. I'm going to give All Our Wrong Todays a 3.5/5 - The concept is great, and I really enjoy the idea of time travel and the toying of utopia and dystopia, and this gives some good perspective, despite falling flat in some important areas.
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