Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow - Book Summary

Embark on an enthralling journey of friendship, innovation, and the world of video games

Delve into the gripping narrative of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, penned by Gabrielle Zevin. This beautifully woven tale of friendship and professional partnership takes us through the life of Sadie Green and Samson Masur. As childhood acquaintances who shared an avid interest in video games, they develop into renowned creators in the field, leaving an undeniable mark on the gaming industry. However, despite their monumental success, their lives are far from linear. The book explores themes of love, loss, resentment, professional rivalry, gender issues, disabilities, racism, belonging, and deception.

Zevin's novel has gained recognition as the pioneering piece that lends the gaming world, its creators, and the players, their deserved literary respect. From subtle humorous references to Donkey Kong to profound contemplations on the role and essence of games and gaming in our existence and friendships — the novel skilfully infuses joy and depth into the portrayal of our on-screen and real-life gaming adventures.

A unique love story of friendship amidst a shared gaming passion

Imagine Los Angeles, 1987 — two eleven-year-olds, Sam Masur and Sadie Green, bonding over a game of Super Mario Bros. It's not the comfort of a home setting, but a hospital game room. Sadie is visiting her cancer-stricken sister, while Sam, encased in a special foot contraption, is recovering from a tragic car accident that claimed his mother's life. When Sadie steps into the game room, she finds Sam deep into a game, on a mission to save Princess Peach. Being an avid gamer, Sadie initiates a conversation with Sam, soon leading to a joyful gaming session.

This encounter holds much more significance than what meets the eye. As a nurse later shares with Sadie, Sam hadn't interacted with anyone since his accident — Sadie was his first conversation. Sam had only kept himself engaged with video games and meticulously sketching maze designs reminiscent of M.C. Escher's style. Realizing the positive impact of their companionship, the nurse suggests Sadie meet Sam regularly in the game room — a proposition that aligns with Sadie's requirement to carry out community service for her upcoming bat mitzvah.

Sadie and Sam spend an entire summer building a strong bond, inventing unique inside jokes, and indulging in their shared love for gaming. However, when Sam learns that their friendship began as a community service project, he is irate. The friendship takes a hit and they drift apart.

But destiny brings them together again in their twenties at a train station. On a whim, Sadie hands over a floppy disk to Sam, containing a prototype of a video game she'd been developing. Intrigued, Sam and his roommate Marx spend an entire night engrossed in Sadie's game. Upon finishing the game, Sam is convinced that he and Sadie are destined to create video games together.

Their first joint creation, a game titled Ichigo, goes on to become a runaway success. The game follows the story of a child washed away to sea, battling obstacles to return to the shore. The duo's contrasting skills balance each other perfectly — Sadie's artistic vision lends the game a stunning aesthetic inspired by Hokusai's famous wave woodprints, and her meticulous programming skills give life to game sequences. Sam's knack for identifying potential problems and an intuitive understanding of where to let go of perfectionism ensures a seamless gaming experience.

However, not all is smooth sailing for the creative pair. As co-founders of their studio, Unfair Games, they face internal disagreements and creative differences. Sadie's work often sways towards indulgence without Sam's regulation; Sam's business decisions, focused on profits, occasionally clash with Sadie's creative vision. The novel subtly exposes these dynamics, narrating their growth as a team, their successes, and their downfalls.

Moreover, personal hardships also cast a shadow over their professional journey. Sadie battles depression and deals with the loss of her partner, while Sam struggles with the permanent disability from his accident and the difficulties of letting people into his life. Their friendship fluctuates, sometimes even breaking down completely. Yet, their shared vision always pulls them back into each other's lives.

While Sam and Sadie's friendship remains platonic, it's this unique relationship that forms the crux of the story. By highlighting this bond, Zevin makes us reconsider the relationships that truly shape our lives. A consistent creative collaboration, the book suggests, can be as significant, fulfilling, and dramatic as a romantic relationship. "Lovers are common," Sadie tells Sam towards the end of the book, "but true collaborators are rare."

Throughout the book, the narrative underscores how Sam and Sadie, when working together, create something far more exceptional than their individual contributions. A failed game they create during a disagreement — developed with separate teams and little interaction — stands as a testament to their combined strength. Despite their differences and personal frustrations, their collaboration always brings out the best in each other, simultaneously curbing each other's excesses. Hence, it seems fitting that the novel concludes with Sadie offering Sam a hard drive — a new beginning, a new game, a continuation of their rare and valuable collaboration.

A tale of second chances and the cruel game of life

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow begins with a serendipitous encounter in Boston — Sam studying at MIT and Sadie at Harvard. Their paths cross in the most unexpected place, a subway station where a crowd has congregated to stare at the latest craze, a Magic Eye poster. Despite the years and miles that have separated them, Sam immediately recognizes the back of Sadie's head.

This fortuitous reunion is a telling opening for the novel, signifying more than just another chance meeting steeped in the realm of games. The book delves deep into themes of happenstance, second chances, happy coincidences, and calamitous accidents. Its title, borrowed from a speech in Shakespeare's Macbeth, resonates with infinite opportunities offered in the gaming world and contrasts starkly with the limited and consequential choices in real life.

Luck plays a significant role in shaping Sam and Sadie's narrative — both within their childhood games and in their real lives. Their chance meeting at the subway, and their initial interaction in a Los Angeles hospital, were both spun by the wheel of fortune. Sadie, a native of Los Angeles, meets New York-born Sam because of an eerie incident. A woman plummeting from a skyscraper survives just long enough to reveal that she shares the same name as Sam's mother. This unsettling coincidence prompts the mother-son duo's move to Los Angeles, where Sam's grandparents run a pizzeria in Koreatown. This fateful relocation sets in motion the series of events culminating in Sam and Sadie's first meeting.

However, the dichotomy between video games and real life becomes glaringly apparent in terms of second chances. In their preteen gaming sessions, losing a life merely meant a game reboot. At times, they would even intentionally lose multiple lives to unlock secret levels or new in-game powers. But, life is not as forgiving as a video game. There's no infinite supply of second chances and no reboot button to make fresh starts.

"Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow" is thus a narrative exploring the choices made by Sam and Sadie, the risks they took and avoided, the precious second chances they sometimes received, and the repercussions of these decisions. This novel underlines the difference between the endless tomorrows of the gaming universe and the unpredictable game of life, where the promise of tomorrow is not a given.

Unmasking the power of gaming in navigating personal identities

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow introduces video games as an unconventional yet vital medium for negotiating complex themes such as identity politics, trauma, misogyny, and ableism. This portrayal recognizes video games as much more than mere entertainment, acknowledging their potential to provide legitimate means to explore and tackle grave matters. Alongside, the narrative exposes the intricate weave of these issues within the gaming industry.

For Sam, who suffers a life-altering car accident at the age of eleven, video games provide more than an escape from his excruciating reality. Gaming becomes a conduit for Sam to grapple with his trauma and renew his connection with the world, especially during sessions with Sadie. As Sam matures into a game designer, he revels in crafting sequences where characters display spectacular physical prowess—his refuge from his "unreliable body". This sentiment materializes in "Both Sides," a game that Sam co-creates with Sadie, where the protagonist Alice Ma is intentionally designed as disabled.

Simultaneously, Sadie contends with entrenched misogyny, being a woman game designer in a predominantly male industry. Her experience includes a tryst with her older, more experienced tutor Dov during her game design course at Harvard, where she is one of two women in a large class. The skewed power dynamics take their toll on Sadie even years later when, despite being acknowledged as an accomplished game developer, rumors and gossip persist about her supposed exploitation of her relationship with Dov to advance her career.

Unfazed, Sam and Sadie aspire to design inclusive and diverse games. Their creation "Mapletown"—a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) where players can assume virtual identities and interact in-game—reflects progressive politics, contrasting with the USA's real-world politics. For instance, "Mapletown" recognizes same-sex marriages long before they gain legal status outside the game. Their first game featuring Ichigo, a groundbreaking, genderless character with they/them pronouns, is another example of their commitment to diversity.

Yet, in retrospect, Sadie questions whether their breakthrough game Ichigo, would have been as successful or even greenlit in the current societal climate. Both she and Sam, neither of whom are non-binary or Japanese, recognize the importance of authentic representation in gaming and beyond, but are wary about how such critical cultural perspectives might stifle creative experimentation and risk-taking.

Sam also echoes these sentiments during a gaming magazine interview. He ponders cultural appropriation and how avoiding it might confine creators to draw only from their cultures—a predicament for someone like him, who is half-Korean, half-Jewish, and does not identify strongly with either culture.

While the question of how much identity politics should influence creativity remains crucial yet unanswered within the novel, the power of games to foster inclusive, diverse, and meaningful spaces for players from all walks of life is irrefutable.

Unveiling the sophistication of gaming through a literary lens

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow depicts the world of gaming as no child's play. Zevin brilliantly elevates game design to a profound art form. Through the highs and lows of Sam and Sadie's friendship, the reader also gets an insightful crash course on the principles and evolution of modern game design.

Unfair Games, the company run by Sam and Sadie, creates a host of cult classic games within the novel's universe. However, the narrative also weaves in references to other iconic games. The Donkey Kong machine in Sam's grandparents' pizzeria in K-Town, for instance, is a consistent fixture, with Sam holding the high score. Sam and Sadie's hospital meeting also sparks a bond over the timeless Mario Brothers franchise. But it's not only Mario that captures Sadie's heart—she also expresses her fondness for Oregon Trail, a simple yet intriguing game where players navigate the perilous journey of a wagon train from Missouri to Oregon.

While Zevin doesn't shy away from mentioning blockbuster video games in the text, the novel's focus leans towards unconventional, alternative games. For example, Sadie's game designs during her Harvard days don't cater to mainstream commercial tastes. One of her creations, EmilyBlaster, is an unusual first-person shooter game where the player recreates Emily Dickinson's verses by shooting at couplets of poetry sprinting across the screen. Another game, Solution, draws from the legendary game Train by innovative game designer Brenda Romero, and essentially challenges the ethics of gameplay. In Solution, players score points by quickly assembling factory equipment. They have the option to inquire about what they're producing, but it slows down their progress. The twist? If players opt to ask questions, they soon discover the disturbing fact that the factory belongs to Nazis during the Third Reich, and the equipment they're building contributes to the concentration camp transportation routes.

Although Unfair Games eventually taps into trending game designs with their launch of the MMORPG Mapletown, the studio's heart remains loyal to artistically driven indie games, reflecting the ethos of its founders.

Despite their disagreements, Sam and Sadie share a fundamental belief in the intimacy, significance, and challenge inherent in gaming and play as methods to connect with other players and the world. It's this passion for gaming and collaboration on new games that maintains the depth of their bond, even as superficial arguments periodically destabilize their friendship. As Zevin succinctly puts it, "To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk…To play requires trust and love."

Concluding Thoughts

Childhood acquaintances Sam and Sadie navigate the journey from being close allies to fierce adversaries. However, a serendipitous encounter on a Boston subway ride rekindles their shared passion for gaming, prompting them to team up as a dynamic pair of video game designers. Along their journey, they confront issues of disability, racism, and sexism, experience the thrill of love, and endure heart-wrenching losses. These profound life experiences leave an indelible mark on the games they craft together—just as the games they play and create leave a significant imprint on their lives.