“But I can’t pin this on him, not the horror of what I did, not the guilt I feel for my inability to really process it. Whatever the karmic weight or moral consequence that is my due, I’ll have to accept it when it comes, as it must. Existence is not something with which to muck around.”
I’m going to start talking about All Our Wrong Todays by talking about Futurama.
Why?
Well they share two very important things, and a third less important thing, and I think liking Futurama set me up to positively fall in love with All Our Wrong Todays. The latter takes everything the prior did right, and simply excels in them.
The third less important thing these works share is their creation of a world in love with both the past and the time they’re written in (even if, as our wonderful narrator in All Our Wrong Todays is so kind to remind us, neither are the past or the present we were supposed to have.) It’s a fun frame, and gets you invested in the characters and the world before we really get going with the story (and in that latter sense we must admit to a bit of a slow burn).
The first important thing is a unique, clever take on time travel. Although it’s kind of entered into the zeitgeist a bit more with shows like Dark and even the Avenger’s “Time Heist” (tm), time travel can (and in its best iterations, is supposed to) get… weird. Sometimes you want to cut that weirdness, sometimes you want to lean into it. Futurama leaned in hard, and it’s kind of ruined a lot of time travel stories for me because of that. A character’s their own grandfather? Sure (also serving up the great line later in the series of “That way you can't accidentally change history, or do something disgusting like sleep with your own grandmother.” “I wouldn’t want to do that again”). Time is a perpetual loop that cycles around, even if a future universe is five feet lower than the current one? Sounds fine. The heartbreaking implications of leaving your dog trapped in the past? Rip my heart out again why don’t you?!
All Our Wrong Todays stands as a fantastic examination both of the tropes of time travel and a new lens to view the problem in a literary and practical example. The problems of space and time are rightly brought up (and hilariously illustrated with the visual of Marty McFly winding up drifting through the cold unforgiving cosmos). Multiple universes that hinge on single decisions, as a trope, must naturally make an appearance, and the horrific implications therein rightfully discussed by our narrator (“Not to be monstrously glib, but there isn’t even a name for my crime. Chronocide? Cooking up a fancy sci-fi term for it only obscures its immensity. There are some acts beyond label or measure.”) All this perfectly encapsulated in what I would argue (even against the narrator’s own admission, but more on that later), is the best piece of advice and worldbuilding All Our Wrong Todays offers: the concept of the accident, explored in the quote and picture below. It’s the weight of responsibility, applicable in deciding what to do on a Friday night to how not to end the universe.
The second important thing shared between the two works is best summed up in a review quoted right on the front cover of the edition I have: “…And a novel this smart has no right to be this funny. Or insightful. Or immersive.” The narrator, Tom Barren (at least for most of it), is a self-proclaimed moron- a sardonic, mostly unaware, self-admitted sexist, slightly funny moron who manages to end entire universes but is unable to read a room or even his own thoughts most of the time, yet someone who somehow manages to have imposter syndrome (well, not somehow, but that’s kind of the fun of time travel). And it’s because he’s only slightly funny that makes him slightly likeable, and for better or worse, slightly endearing. He doesn’t quite know how to be dishonest with himself, let alone the reader, and that kind of frankness is investing. From his perspective on life we gain insight in the unspoken rules of his world, and even of ours. One of his lines is even on my quote board:
“Returning from school after I ran away, I made the most important discovery of my adolescence-it doesn’t matter if you’re smart or skilled if you can somehow be first.”
This is important, too, because Tom is neither smart nor skilled. But he was first to experience a lot of things, and his firsts drive the entire novel. Between that and his endearing lack of self-awareness, Tom is then the perfect vector not only to examine the world he had, but the world we have and to a greater extent, ourselves and the world we’re supposed to have. It can make you angry, or sad, or rolling on the ground laughing, but where the winding story and unique characters of All Our Wrong Todays shine is in examining the human condition so acutely that it earns its spot in my Top Ten.
And it does it based on what Tom feels is the book’s most important lesson, painted in large letters on my copy’s inside flap:
“There’s no such thing as the life you’re supposed to have.”
If it’s a bit cheesy, well, so is All Our Wrong Todays, and it owns that from the get-go. It’s part of the book’s endearing nature, its open-faced admission that everything being discussed is kind of ridiculous, but so also is the fact that any of us exist at all. Part of that comes from the fact that Tom comes from the world we’re supposed to have (a fact he loves reminding the reader of) and that he’s kind of an idiot who’s bad at explaining things (but, to his point, do you really know how your phone works?). The rest of All Our Wrong Today’s beauty comes from the full-throttle embrace and love the story has for its topics, for human nature, for time, weirdly enough for architecture, and for this general sense that it’s our responsibility to make the world we want to have.
Because we’re not supposed to have it.
We’re supposed to make it.
We are the architects of our future, or our apocalypses, each of us destined to live someday in all our right and all our wrong todays. Somewhere, in the middle ground of “futurist manifest destiny and apocalyptic ruin,” is a chance to imagine something else, something new.
A future.
As a question put to a room of stunned architects goes:
“Look out that window at the story we’ve told. Is that a story you’re proud to tell? Think about what you tried to build today and ask yourself if it will change this world into the one we need. If not, why not? Start again.”
And, even if you’re not starring in a novel about time travel, there will be plenty of opportunities in life to start again. To try and build the world we’re supposed to have.
