Review of All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This may not be the best time-travel/alternate history book ever written, but it is definitely right up there. For a first novel, it is extremely well-written--then again, it was written by an established screenwriter, but the movies he's written are all mediocre. His calling is definitely as a novelist. Actually, it is very well-written, period.

It posits a hypothesis of changing the past that is in line with what I will do for a novel that I am planning (it's in the outlining stage, on the shelf temporarily while I work to get my zombie novel done).

This is a great read from start to finish. It doesn't force you to think too much, except in one section, as he illustrates action second by second. If you don't like theories of time travel, you'll still like it, but if you are into that sort of thing, it certainly has some fun nuggets in there, though you'll fare better reading non-fiction books about time travel. Time Travel And Warp Drives by Everett and Roman is a good one.

WHAT FOLLOWS IS MILD SPOILERS. HOWEVER, IT IS STILL LESS THAN YOU'LL FIND ON THE JACKET COPY, WHICH I NEVER READ BECAUSE IT WILL SPOIL IT FOR ME. READ ON IF YOU'RE STILL ON THE FENCE WHETHER TO READ THIS OR NOT. I RECOMMEND STOPPING AS SOON AS YOU'VE MADE A DECISION TO READ IT.

You know the future world we were supposed to have? You know, flying cars, moving sidewalks, and the like. Well, there was an alternate history in which this developed, and then it was ruined by Tom Barren and time travel. Now we're stuck with . . . what we have now. Which I suppose is just fine, but it's not all it could be.

But what if your life, and the lives of your loved ones, is better in *this* world, than in the *better* world--the world that's better for most people. Where different people lived. Anyone born after 1965 (certainly significantly after) in the old, better, world, usually does not exist, replaced by others.

And what if you had the power to fix what you screwed up and change things back? Would you? And what if you remember BOTH histories simultaneously, where you are the same person, genetically, but with completely different personalities?



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