Review of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Why don’t more authors write novels about video games?

My favorite part of the book was exploring the games the main characters conceptualized. The story of their lives, interwoven with video game logic, was interesting, but did not hook me as readily as the obsessive focus on the number one most profitable form of media in our current era.

Though it charts some of the industry developments since the birth of games in the eighties (birth in the sense that they became viable business-wise), the characters drive the plot of this well-orchestrated novel. We start out in the Oregon Trail days, with Tetris and Donkey Kong arcade and PC games paving the way, King’s Quest and Chrono Trigger influencing our main cast of designers, Pac-Man, etc. Etc. Plenty of name-dropping. They deal with the constraints of the medium and concoct clever programming work-arounds, just like real-life game designers.

Though there is an element of wish fulfillment here, as there is in most bestsellers, the way the author traces the rise of her characters through their various successes and failures is not so much realistic as it is satisfying. Of course, some designers and concept artists were in the right place at the right time like these people, but most people who pursue a creative career will not find such a direct route to massive success. But I have come to expect when reading a book about creatives, that they will get what they want in the end, and the punishment of the industry will not defeat them, except in bits and pieces. Everything you might expect is here. It panders and checks all the boxes. Its characters are either disabled, nonbinary, omnisexual, or otherwise punctuated by some sort of label the novel gives them. The society in the novel seems hateful toward them because of the label. It may or may not be an accurate depiction of American attitudes the past few decades. It didn’t stop me from getting invested in the story at least. The characters have hang ups. You get that typical young person stupidity seen in most Rom Coms, where most of the tension derives from the main love interests not expressing their feeling for one another over the course of years or decades. I truly loathed the character of Dove, the highly unpleasant sensei of our main perspective Sadie, who is an abusive, horrible individual who skates through life through the force of his so-called charm. I dislike it when characters stay in an abusive relationship way too long.

But all of these inter-relations in the book were besides the point in my eyes. I adored the forays into fantastical realms, the talk of the inner forces within a game which cohere into a wholistic experience. The discussion of real-life games tickled my nerdy nerve centers. The way video games bleed into life were especially good. How life is a sort of programming. How the brain works. How people tick. The real-life NPCs. And the trolls lurk in background, ready to stir up trouble because they think they understand politics better than some video game creators and their lives have no meaning outside of protesting something. So there was a lot of anger in the book. Plenty of sadness toward the current state of affairs. But there was so much escape, such lush indulgence in the art and joy of gaming. Anyone who knows this feeling, this wonderful moment of suspension in a virtual world, who might prefer that world for mere hours to our waking one, will appreciate this book. And that is why the novel succeeds.