All Our Wrong Todays
A Novel
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4.3 • 230 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
“Entertainingly mixes thrills and humor.”—Entertainment Weekly
“[An] amazing debut novel....Dazzling and complex....Fearlessly funny storytelling.”—The Washington Post
“Instantly engaging....A timeless, if mind-bending, story about the journeys we take, populated by friends, family, lovers, and others, that show us who we might be, could be—and maybe never should be—that eventually leads us to who we are.”—USA Today
Elan Mastai's acclaimed debut novel is a story of friendship and family, of unexpected journeys and alternate paths, and of love in its multitude of forms.
It's 2016, and in Tom Barren's world, technology has solved all of humanity's problems—there's no war, no poverty, no under-ripe avocadoes. Unfortunately, Tom isn't happy. He's lost the girl of his dreams. And what do you do when you're heartbroken and have a time machine? Something stupid.
Finding himself stranded in a terrible alternate reality—which we immediately recognize as our 2016—Tom is desperate to fix his mistake and go home. Right up until the moment he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career, and the woman who may just be the love of his life.
Now Tom faces an impossible choice. Go back to his perfect but loveless life. Or stay in our messy reality with a soulmate by his side. His search for the answer takes him across continents and timelines in a quest to figure out, finally, who he really is and what his future—our future—is supposed to be.
Filled with humor and heart and packed with insight, intelligence, and mind-bending invention, All Our Wrong Todays is a powerful and moving story of life, loss, and love.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Canadian author Elan Mastai’s first novel makes time travel hip. It’s the story of a slacker named Tom living in an alternate reality that’s as fizzy and hopeful as The Jetsons, thanks to a major scientific breakthrough that’s harnessed the energy of the Earth’s rotation to create unlimited clean energy and free humans to live healthy, carefree lives. But when Tom messes with his estranged father’s pioneering technology, he upsets history. All Our Wrong Todays is a fun sci-fi romp with a humanist heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Mastai's imaginative debut novel, Tom Barren's version of 2016 is a technological utopia based on a model popularized by 1950s science fiction. There are flying cars, robot maids, jet packs, teleportation, ray guns, and space vacations. Thanks to an experimental time machine, Tom travels back to the moment this glorious future was born the 1965 invention of the Goettreider Engine, a clean-energy source that transformed mankind. Unfortunately, Tom's presence causes the experiment to go haywire. He disappears, and when he rematerializes he is in an alternate timeline, socially and technologically backward in other words, our own 2016. Horrified at what he sees, Tom tries to come to terms with his new environment, which is only made bearable by a bookstore owner named Penny, with whom he promptly falls in love. In order to prove to her where he is really from, Tom is forced to track down the scientist who invented the clean-energy device. From here, the story takes several startling turns as Tom tries to make things right by using another time machine to change the future of this timeline. Mastai has fun with all the usual conventions of time travel and its many paradoxes, and the cherry on top is his dialogue, reminiscent of Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Customer Reviews
Amazing
I was given this book from a Good reads giveaway from the author for honest review. Let me start off by saying my favorite part of this book was the time travel and all the science behind all this. Tom was a 32 year old man who to me didn't belong in his world he had a father who hated him and a mother who dropped everything to do make things easy for her husband to make his life easy. And for Tom it was hard to please his father in his time. Until he is Penelope under study in Tom father study of time travel. I did go back fourth with Tom and how he mind set of thinking and how he was feeling and how he did things. The women in his life seem kinda blah to me. If you like time travel and a lot science and number and hoe some people would do anything to relive that one moment over and over then this is the book. Thank you again Elan Mastai for letting me read this book and enjoying it.
Would you please make a movie of this?
Loved it, just an amazing time travel story. I was never sure where it was going but I was so satisfied.
Junk
Absolute garbage