All Our Wrong Todays (Mastai)

All Our Wrong Todays 
Elan Mastai, 2017
Penguin Publishing
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101985137


Summary
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.

All Our Wrong Todays is about the versions of ourselves that we shed and grow into over time. It is a story of friendship and family, of unexpected journeys and alternate paths, and of love in its multitude of forms.

Filled with humor and heart, and saturated with insight and intelligence and a mind-bending talent for invention, this novel signals the arrival of a major talent. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1974-75
• Where—Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• Education—Queens University; Concordia University
• Awards—Canadian Screen Award
• Currently—lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada


Elan Mastai is a Canadian screenwriter and novelist. He is best known for The F Word, for which he won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 2nd Canadian Screen Awards in 2014. His debut novel, All the Wrong Todays was published in 2017 and is rumored to have fetched a seven figure advance. A time-travel-goes-awry tale, the book's breezy, humorous style has been compared to Adam Douglas's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Mastai was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, to a Canadian mother and an Israeli immigrant father. He studied film at Queen's University and Concordia University. He lives with his wife and children and an Australian Shepherd named Ruby Slippers in Toronto. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/9/2017.)

Book Reviews
Elan Mastai’s debut is a sci-fi tour de force—whip smart, imaginative, thoughtful, and funny. The novel is set in 2016, not our 2016 but a techno-utopian 2016—the result of a perpetual energy machine invented in 1965. That new, endless source of clean, cheap energy led to a burst of innovation, accelerated beyond anything we know of in this 2016. Mastai has obvious fun drawing comparisons between his "futuristic" 2016 and ours. One has airborne cars, digital clothing, interactive novels, and worldwide prosperity. The other doesn’t.  READ MORE.
P.J. Adler - LitLovers


[An] amazing debut novel.… Dazzling and complex.… Fearlessly funny storytelling... In the alternative reality of our own day when many long for the chance to turn back time, some solace might be found in the masochistic pleasures of this trippy and ultimately touching novel.
Washington Post


All Our Wrong Todays is an incredibly creative work. It’s as if Mastai time traveled and took copious notes of what a future utopian world would be. The science is as engaging as the romance. Mastai has mastered the art of endearing himself to an audience through both knowledge and entertainment. It’s definitely out of this world — or an alternate universe.
Associated Press


Shades of sci-fi, but also an endearing comedy about family and friendship.
New York Post


[All Our Wrong Todays] earns the case it makes for the messiness, heartbreak and imperfections of our world, and in doing so helped reconnect me to my fellow humans, whom, at the moment, I find inscrutable and frightening in equal measure.
Ron Currie - Chicago Tribune


A time-travel tale that works.… A multiverse trans-timeline love story… All storytelling is time travel, but not all time travel stories are worth telling, and though I don't have the word count to properly place All Our Wrong Todays in the pantheon of chrono adventures (somewhere between Voyagers! and Ken Grimwood's Replay), it more than deserves to be on readers' shelves in any timeline.
Dallas Morning News


On top of this brilliant philosophical premise of parallel versions of one’s life and the people in it—of what might have been had history unfolded different—Mastai’s language is also rife with an infectious humor you won’t be able to stop reading.
HarpersBazaar.com


You don't have to be a sci-fi fan to become totally enthralled with this fresh, time-travel novel by screenwriter Mastai . [A]n utterly clever, entertaining love story.
RealSimple.com


With humor, grace and dizzying skill, Mastai crafts a time-traveling novel that challenges every convention of the trope, and succeeds brilliantly. His droll, unassuming writing style couches a number of razor-sharp critiques while the endless array of...possibilities give the story its drive and irresistible exuberance heartrending, funny, smart, and stunningly, almost brazenly hopeful (a Top Pick).
Romance Times Book Reviews


[I]maginative . [T]he story takes several startling turns as Tom tries to change the future of this timeline. Mastai has fun with all the usual conventions of time travel . and the cherry on top is his dialogue, reminiscent of Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Mastai creates a fascinating tapestry of interconnected alternate realities . A potent mixture of sincere introspection and a riveting examination of time travel and alternate realities, this highly recommended novel is reminiscent of Jo Walton's My Real Children with the breeziness of Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore.
Library Journal


Mastai's utopian worldbuilding is complex and imaginative . An entertaining rom-com of errors, All Our Wrong Todays backflips through paradoxes while exploring provocative questions of grief and the multitudes we contain within ourselves. Ultimately, it's a story about love—and the stupid things we'll do for it.
BookPage


(Starred review.) [T]he story of the world's first and, unfortunately for us all, most unqualified time traveler. Mastai considers not only the workings, but the consequences (and there are many) of time travel, packing so much into the last 100 pages it feels as if there's a literal weight pressing on your mind. [E]ntertaining.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion question for All the Wrong Todays...then take off on your own:

1. Talk about the ways in which All Our Wrong Todays' alternate 2016 is similar or dissimilar to the 2016 we know. Which reality do you prefer? How do you view the level of advanced technology in the first 2016? Consider the improvements it makes to life, as well as the ways in which it detracts from life? Overall, how would you characterize the hyper-technological world—as utopian or dystopian?

2. What could possibly go wrong? Tom Barren travels back to 1965, the year the Goettreider Engine (get the play on the name?) was invented. Why does his presence cause the machine to go haywire?

3. What light does Elan Mastai's book shine of the problems and paradoxes of time travel?

4. How do the "Tom Barrens" differ from one another in the alternate timelines?

5. And then there's Penelope. What do you think of her?

6. What does Tom learn by the end of the book? What insights does he gain? How about you? What insights have you gained—regarding what it means to be human, the importance of family, and the power of love?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

top of page (summary)