{"id":75937,"date":"2017-09-04T13:13:10","date_gmt":"2017-09-04T02:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/?p=75937"},"modified":"2017-09-04T13:13:10","modified_gmt":"2017-09-04T02:13:10","slug":"book-affectionately-called-lemon-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2017\/09\/04\/book-affectionately-called-lemon-book\/","title":{"rendered":"The book affectionately called ‘The Lemon Book’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"All<\/a>
\nTom has just 20 seconds to save the world. But which world will he choose?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the premise of Elan Mastai\u2019s debut novel, All Our Wrong Todays,<\/em><\/a> which was released in February this year. Since then, bestselling authors have shared their thoughts, calling it \u201can absolute joy to read\u201d (V. E. Schwab), and \u201ca witty and freewheeling time-traveling romance that packs an emotional wallop\u201d (Maria Semple). Even Andy Weir, the New York Times bestselling author of The Martian<\/em> has commented, calling it a “thrilling tale of time travel and alternate timelines with a refreshingly optimistic view of humanity\u2019s future.”<\/p>\n

Now read what Booktopia\u2019s very own Bronwyn Eley thinks, then scroll down to read an extract of All Our Wrong Todays.<\/em><\/p>\n

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai<\/strong>
\nReview by Bronwyn Eley<\/strong><\/p>\n

From the get-go, I affectionately referred to this book as \u2018The Lemon Book\u2019 (so named due to that gorgeous cover), so that is what I will call it in this review. In a nutshell, The Lemon Book did not disappoint. I wasn\u2019t sure exactly what to expect with this book – I mean, flying cars, food pills and moon bases sound great, but surely the future\u2019s not as amazing as The Jetsons made it out to be?<\/p>\n

Yeah…it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

Tom\u2019s life is anything but amazing. His mum is dead (thanks to a flying car), his dad is cold and unloving, and the woman he loves? Well\u2026 let\u2019s just say I feel bad for Tom.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s this concept in the book about how for every great new invention, the accident of that thing is also invented. The invention of the car came with car accidents, the invention of the plane came with plane crashes, and so on and so forth. This turns out to be a big theme in this book – they invented time travel, so what is the accident? As it turns out, it\u2019s Tom. And he proves to be a very big accident indeed.<\/p>\n

Tom spends most of the novel trying to make up for his disastrous mistake, although his actions leading up to it are kind of reasonable, given the circumstances. That\u2019s what I like most about this book – for all of Tom\u2019s flaws I found that in some strange way I understood him, and I appreciated how honest he was. In an endearing way, this whole book reads like the first draft of a very messy memoir, or like diary entries exposing the whiny, arrogant man beneath. When I look back on diary entries I\u2019ve written over the years, I cringe to think of anyone else reading them, and it was this unflinching honesty that lured me in. I felt like I really knew every part of Tom – especially the ugly parts we usually keep hidden.<\/p>\n

All in all, this book isn\u2019t just about flying cars and food pills. It isn\u2019t all cuddles and kisses either. Tom\u2019s journey into adulthood and maturity may make it look like the universe is playing a cruel, twisted game on him, but it makes for one hell of a book.<\/p>\n

On that cheerful note, I have one last thing I\u2019d like to say: *chants* Movie, movie, movie, movie!<\/p>\n

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Read an Extract of All Our Wrong Todays
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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\"All<\/a>Chapter 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, the thing is, I come from the world we were supposed to have.<\/p>\n

That means nothing to you, obviously, because you live here, in the crappy world we\u00a0do\u00a0<\/em>have. But it never should\u2019ve turned out like this. And it\u2019s all my fault \u2013 well, me and to a lesser extent my father and, yeah, I guess a little bit Penelope. It\u2019s hard to know how to start telling this story. But, okay, you know the future that people in the 1950s imagined we\u2019d have? Flying cars, robot maids, food pills, teleportation, jet packs, moving sidewalks, ray guns, hover boards, space vacations, and moon bases. All that dazzling, transformative technology our grandparents were certain was right around the corner. The stuff of world\u2019s fairs and pulp science-fiction magazines with titles like\u00a0Fantastic Future Tales\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0The Amazing World of Tomorrow.\u00a0<\/em>Can you picture it?<\/p>\n

Well, it happened.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It all happened, more or less exactly as envisioned. I\u2019m not talking about the future. I\u2019m talking about the\u00a0present.\u00a0<\/em>Today, in the year 2016, humanity lives in a techno-utopian paradise of abundance, purpose, and wonder.<\/p>\n

Except we don\u2019t. Of course we don\u2019t. We live in a world where, sure, there are iPhones and 3D printers and, I don\u2019t know, drone strikes or whatever. But it hardly looks like\u00a0The Jetsons.\u00a0<\/em>Except it should. And it did. Until it didn\u2019t. But it would have, if I hadn\u2019t done what I did. Or, no, hold on, what I\u00a0will\u00a0<\/em>have done.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sorry, despite receiving the best education available to a citizen of the World of Tomorrow, the grammar of this situation is a bit complicated.<\/p>\n

Maybe the first person is the wrong way to tell this story. Maybe if I take refuge in the third person I\u2019ll find some sort of distance or insight or at least peace of mind. It\u2019s worth a try.<\/p>\n

Chapter 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Tom Barren wakes up into his own dream.<\/p>\n

Every night, neural scanners map his dreams while he sleeps so that both his conscious and unconscious thought patterns can be effectively modeled. Every morning, the neural scanners transmit the current dream-state data into a program that generates a real-time virtual projection into which he seamlessly rouses. The dream\u2019s scattershot plot is made increasingly linear and lucid until a psychologically pleasing resolution is achieved at the moment of full consciousness . . .<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sorry \u2013 I can\u2019t write like this. It\u2019s fake. It\u2019s safe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The third person is comforting because it\u2019s in control, which feels really nice when relating events that were often so out of control. It\u2019s like a scientist describing a biological sample seen through a microscope. But I\u2019m not the microscope. I\u2019m the thing on the slide. And I\u2019m not writing this to make myself comfortable. If I wanted comfort, I\u2019d write fiction.<\/p>\n

In fiction, you cohere all these evocative, telling details into a portrait of the world. But in everyday life, you hardly notice any of the little things. You can\u2019t. Your brain swoops past it all, especially when it\u2019s your own home, a place that feels barely separate from the inside of your mind or the outside of your body.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When you wake up from a real dream into a virtual one, it\u2019s like you\u2019re on a raft darting this way and that according to the blurry, impenetrable currents of your unconscious, until you find yourself gliding onto a wide, calm, shallow lake, and the slippery, fraught weirdness dissolves into serene, reassuring clarity. The story wraps up the way it feels like it must, and no matter how unsettling the content, you wake with the rejuvenating solidity of order restored. And that\u2019s when you realize you\u2019re lying in bed, ready to start the day, with none of that sticky subconscious gristle caught in the cramped folds of your mind.<\/p>\n

It might be what I miss most about where I come from.<\/p>\n

Because in this world waking up sucks.<\/p>\n

Here, it\u2019s like nobody has considered using even the most rudimentary technology to improve the process. Mattresses don\u2019t subtly vibrate to keep your muscles loose. Targeted steam valves don\u2019t clean your body in slumber. I mean, blankets are made from tufts of plant fiber spun into thread and occasionally stuffed with feathers. Feathers. Like from actual birds. Waking up should be the best moment of your day, your unconscious and conscious minds synchronized and harmonious.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Getting dressed involves an automated device that cuts and stitches a new outfit every morning, indexed to your personal style and body type. The fabric is made from laser-hardened strands of a light-sensitive liquid polymer that\u2019s recycled nightly for daily reuse. For breakfast, a similar system outputs whatever meal you feel like from a nutrient gel mixed with color, flavor, and texture protocols. And if that sounds gross to you, in practice it\u2019s indistinguishable from what you think of as real food, except that it\u2019s uniquely gauged to your tongue\u2019s sensory receptors so it tastes and feels ideal every time. You know that sinking feeling you get when you cut into an avocado, only to find that it\u2019s either hard and underripe or brown and bruised under its skin? Well, I didn\u2019t know that could even happen until I came here. Every avocado I ever ate was perfect. It\u2019s weird to be nostalgic for experiences that both did and didn\u2019t exist. Like waking up every morning completely refreshed. Something I didn\u2019t even realize I\u00a0could\u00a0<\/em>take for granted because it was simply the way things were. But that\u2019s the point, of course \u2013 the way things were . . . never was.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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What I\u2019m not nostalgic for is that every morning when I woke up and got dressed and ate breakfast in this glittering technological utopia, I was alone.<\/p>\n

Chapter 3<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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On July 11, 1965, Lionel Goettreider invented the future.<\/p>\n

Obviously you\u2019ve never heard of him. But where I come from, Lionel Goettreider is the most famous, beloved, and respected human on the planet. Every city has dozens of things named after him: streets, buildings, parks, whatever. Every kid knows how to spell his name using the catchy mnemonic tune that goes\u00a0G\u2011O\u2011E\u2011T\u2011T\u2011R\u2011E\u2011I\u2011D\u2011E\u2011R.<\/em><\/p>\n

You have no idea what I\u2019m talking about. But if you were from where I\u2019m from, it\u2019d be as familiar to you as\u00a0A\u2011B\u2011C.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fifty-one years ago, Lionel Goettreider invented a revolutionary way to generate unlimited, robust, absolutely clean energy. His device came to be called the Goettreider Engine. July 11, 1965, was the day he turned it on for the very first time. It made everything possible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Imagine that the last five decades happened with no restrictions on energy. No need to dig deeper and deeper into the ground and make the skies dirtier and dirtier. Nuclear became unnecessarily tempestuous. Coal and oil pointlessly murky. Solar and wind and even hydropower became quaint low- fidelity alternatives that nobody bothered with unless they were peculiarly determined to live off the main grid.<\/p>\n

So, how did the Goettreider Engine work?<\/p>\n

How does electricity work? How does a microwave oven work? How does your cell phone or television or remote control work? Do you actually understand on, like, a concrete technical level? If those technologies disappeared, could you reconceive, redesign, and rebuild them from scratch? And, if not, why not? You only use these things pretty much every single day.<\/p>\n

But of course you don\u2019t know. Because unless your job\u2019s in a related field you don\u2019t need to know. They just\u00a0work,\u00a0<\/em>effortlessly, as they were intended to.<\/p>\n

Where I come from, that\u2019s how it is with the Goettreider Engine. It was important enough to make Goettreider as recognizable a name as Einstein or Newton or Darwin. But how it functioned, like, technically? I really couldn\u2019t tell you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Basically, you know how a dam produces energy? Turbines harness the natural propulsion of water flowing downward via gravity to generate electricity. To be clear, that\u2019s more or less\u00a0all\u00a0<\/em>I understand about hydroelectric power. Gravity pulls water down, so if you stick a turbine in its path, the water spins it around and somehow makes energy.<\/p>\n

The Goettreider Engine does that with the planet. You know that the Earth spins on its axis and also revolves around the Sun, while the Sun itself moves endlessly through the solar system. Like water through a turbine, the Goettreider Engine harnesses the constant rotation of the planet to create boundless energy. It has something to do with magnetism and gravity and . . . honestly, I don\u2019t know \u2013 any more than I genuinely understand an alkaline battery or a combustion engine or an incandescent light bulb. They just work.<\/p>\n

So does the Goettreider Engine. It just works. Or it did. Before, you know,\u00a0me.<\/em><\/p>\n

Chapter 4<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

I am not a genius. If you\u2019ve read this far, you\u2019re already aware of that fact.<\/p>\n

But my father is a legitimate full-blown genius of the highest order. After finishing his third PhD, Victor Barren spent a few crucial years working in long-range teleportation before founding his own lab to pursue his specific niche field \u2013 time travel.<\/p>\n

Even where I come from, time travel was considered more or less impossible. Not because of time, actually, but because of space.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why every time-travel movie you\u2019ve ever seen is total bullshit: because the Earth moves.<\/p>\n

You know this. Plus I mentioned it last chapter. The Earth spins all the way around once a day, revolves around the Sun once a year, while the Sun is on its own cosmic route through the solar system, which is itself hurtling through a galaxy that\u2019s wandering an epic path through the universe.<\/p>\n

The ground under you is moving, really fast. Along the equator, the Earth rotates at over 1,000 miles per hour, twenty-four hours a day, while orbiting the Sun at a little over 67,000 miles per hour. That\u2019s 1,600,000 miles per day. Meanwhile our solar system is in motion relative to the Milky Way galaxy at more than 1,300,000 miles per hour, covering just shy of 32,000,000 miles per day. And so on.<\/p>\n

If you were to travel back in time to yesterday, the Earth would be in a different place in space. Even if you travel back in time one second, the Earth below your feet can move nearly half a kilometer. In one second.<\/p>\n

The reason every movie about time travel is nonsense is that the Earth moves, constantly, always. You travel back one day, you don\u2019t end up in the same location \u2013 you end up in the gaping vacuum of outer space.<\/p>\n

Marty McFly didn\u2019t appear thirty years earlier in his hometown of Hill Valley, California. His tricked-out DeLorean materialized in the endless empty blackness of the cosmos with the Earth approximately 350,000,000,000 miles away. Assuming he didn\u2019t immediately lose consciousness from the lack of oxygen, the absence of air pressure would cause all the fluids in his body to bubble, partially evaporate, and freeze. He would be dead in less than a minute.<\/p>\n

The Terminator would probably survive in space because it\u2019s an unstoppable robot killing machine, but traveling from 2029 to 1984 would\u2019ve given Sarah Connor a 525,000,000,000 mile head start.<\/p>\n

Time travel doesn\u2019t just require traveling back in time. It also requires traveling back to a pinpoint-specific location in space. Otherwise, just like with regular old everyday teleportation, you could end up stuck\u00a0inside\u00a0<\/em>something.<\/p>\n

Think about where you\u2019re sitting right now. Let\u2019s say on an olive-green couch. A white ceramic bowl of fake green pears and real brown pinecones propped next to your feet on the teak coffee table. A brushed-steel floor lamp glows over your shoulder. A coarse rug over reclaimed barn-board elm floors that cost too much but look pretty great . . .<\/p>\n

If you were to teleport even a few inches in any direction, your body would be embedded in a solid object. One inch, you\u2019re wounded. Two inches, you\u2019re maimed. Three inches, you\u2019re dead.<\/p>\n

Every second of the day, we\u2019re all three inches from being dead.<\/p>\n

Which is why teleportation is safe and effective only if it\u2019s between dedicated sites on an exactingly calibrated system.<\/p>\n

My father\u2019s early work in teleportation was so important because it helped him understand the mechanics of disincorporating and re-incorporating a human body between discrete locations. It\u2019s what stymied all previous time-travel initiatives. Reversing the flow of time isn\u2019t even that complex. What\u2019s outrageously complex is instantaneous space travel with abso- lute accuracy across potentially billions of miles.<\/p>\n

My father\u2019s genius wasn\u2019t just about solving both the theoretical and logistical challenges of time travel. It was about recognizing that in this, as in so many other aspects of every- day life, our savior was Lionel Goettreider.<\/p>\n

Chapter 5<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The first Goettreider Engine was turned on once and never turned off \u2013 it\u2019s been running without interruption since 2:03 p.m. on Sunday, July 11, 1965.<\/p>\n

Goettreider\u2019s original device wasn\u2019t designed to harness and emit large-scale amounts of energy. It was an experimental prototype that performed beyond its inventor\u2019s most grandiose expectations. But the whole point of a Goettreider Engine is that it never has to be deactivated, just as the planet never stops moving. So, the prototype was left running in the same spot where it was first switched on, in front of a small crowd of sixteen observers in a basement laboratory in sec- tion B7 of the San Francisco State Science and Technology Center.<\/p>\n

Where I come from, every schoolkid knows the names and faces of the Sixteen Witnesses. Numerous books have been written about every single one of them, with their presence at this ultimate hinge in history shoved into the chronology of their individual lives as the defining event, whether or not it was factually true.<\/p>\n

Countless works of art have depicted\u00a0The Activation of the Goettreider Engine.\u00a0<\/em>It\u2019s\u00a0The Last Supper\u00a0<\/em>of the modern world, those sixteen faces, each with its own codified reaction. Skeptical. Awed. Distracted. Amused. Jealous. Angry. Thoughtful. Fright- ened. Detached. Concerned. Excited. Nonchalant. Harried. There\u2019s three more. Damn it, I should know this . . .<\/p>\n

When the prototype Engine was first turned on, Goettreider just wanted to verify his calculations and prove his theory wasn\u2019t completely misguided \u2013 all it had to do was actually\u00a0work.\u00a0<\/em>And it did work, but it had a major defect. It emitted a unique radiation signature, what was later called\u00a0tau radiation,\u00a0<\/em>a nod to how physics uses the Greek capital letter T to represent\u00a0proper time\u00a0<\/em>in relativity equations.<\/p>\n

As the Engine\u2019s miraculous energy-generating capacities expanded to power the whole world, the tau radiation signature was eliminated from the large-scale industrial models. But the prototype was left to run, theoretically forever, in Goettreider\u2019s lab in San Francisco \u2013 now among the most vis- ited museums on the planet \u2013 out of respect, nostalgia, and a legally rigid clause in Goettreider\u2019s last will and testament.<\/p>\n

My father\u2019s idea was to use the original device\u2019s tau radiation signature as a bread-crumb trail through space and time, each crumb the size of an atom, a knotted thread to the past, looping through the cosmos with an anchor fixed at the most important moment in history \u2013 Sunday, July 11, 1965, 2:03:48 p.m., the exact second Lionel Goettreider started the future. It meant that not only could my father send someone back in time to a very specific moment, the tau radiation trail would lead them to a very specific location \u2013 Lionel Goett- reider\u2019s lab, right before the world changed forever.<\/p>\n

With this realization, my father had almost every piece of the time-travel puzzle. There was only one last thing, minor compared to transporting a sentient human being into the past, but major in terms of not accidentally shredding the present \u2013 a way to ensure the time traveler can\u2019t affect the past in any tangible way. There were several crucial safeguards in my father\u2019s design, but the only one I care about is the\u00a0defusion sphere.\u00a0<\/em>Because that\u2019s how Penelope Weschler\u2019s life collided with mine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom has just 20 seconds to save the world. But which world will he choose? That\u2019s the premise of Elan Mastai\u2019s debut novel, All Our Wrong Todays, which was released in February this year. Since then, bestselling authors have shared their thoughts, calling it \u201can absolute joy to read\u201d (V. E. Schwab), and \u201ca witty and freewheeling time-traveling romance that packs an emotional wallop\u201d (Maria Semple). Even Andy Weir, the New York Times bestselling author of The Martian has commented, calling it a “thrilling tale of time travel and alternate timelines with a refreshingly optimistic view of humanity\u2019s future.” Now read what Booktopia\u2019s very own Bronwyn Eley thinks, then scroll down to read an extract of All Our Wrong Todays. All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai Review by Bronwyn Eley From the get-go, I affectionately referred to this book as \u2018The Lemon Book\u2019 (so named due to that gorgeous cover), so that is what I will call it in this review. In a nutshell, The Lemon Book did not disappoint. I wasn\u2019t sure exactly what to expect with this book – I mean, flying cars, food pills and moon bases sound great, but surely the future\u2019s not as amazing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":75942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[24,6678],"tags":[7896,7898,7897,1910,1974,4482],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/lemon-book-SOCIAL.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75937"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75937"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75956,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75937\/revisions\/75956"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}