All Our Wrong Todays

November 14, 2016
In Mastai’s imaginative debut novel, Tom Barren’s version of 2016 is a technological utopia based on a model popularized by 1950s science fiction. There are flying cars, robot maids, jet packs, teleportation, ray guns, and space vacations. Thanks to an experimental time machine, Tom travels back to the moment this glorious future was born—the 1965 invention of the Goettreider Engine, a clean-energy source that transformed mankind. Unfortunately, Tom’s presence causes the experiment to go haywire. He disappears, and when he rematerializes he is in an alternate timeline, socially and technologically backward—in other words, our own 2016. Horrified at what he sees, Tom tries to come to terms with his new environment, which is only made bearable by a bookstore owner named Penny, with whom he promptly falls in love. In order to prove to her where he is really from, Tom is forced to track down the scientist who invented the clean-energy device. From here, the story takes several startling turns as Tom tries to make things right by using another time machine to change the future of this timeline. Mastai has fun with all the usual conventions of time travel and its many paradoxes, and the cherry on top is his dialogue, reminiscent of Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Agent: Simon Lipskar, Writers House.

Starred review from December 1, 2016
Screenwriter Mastai's debut novel is the story of the world's first and, unfortunately for us all, most unqualified time traveler.July 11, 1965, is the day the world changed. It's the day that physicist Lionel Goettreider turns on his new creation, the Goettreider Engine, which works better than he or his 16 witnesses ever imagined: the machine generates an unlimited source of clean energy. How does it work? "It has something to do with magnetism and gravity and...honestly, I don't know...it just works. Or it did. Before, you know, me." This me is Tom Barren, who comes from "the world we were supposed to have." Tom is not from the future but rather a wildly different and more advanced 2016. His reality is a place marked by the "absence of material want," and yet Tom isn't happy. His career and love life are going nowhere, and, considering he is the son of the foremost scientist in the field of time travel, he is pretty much a failure. But then his father intervenes and hires him to become the understudy of Penelope Weschler, the insanely driven woman preparing to become one of the world's first "chrononauts," the fancy term for time traveler. Tom is there in case Penelope royally messes up, which would never happen. But then Tom falls in love with Penelope and Penelope notices, and everything unravels--so much so that Tom finds himself emotionally broken and activating the time machine without permission to go back to July 11, 1965, the moment his world began. And since Tom is not Penelope, things go horribly wrong. Mastai's novel is both charming and wondrously plotted--Tom's self-deprecation in the beginning seems to limit his potential as a character and yet, in the end, he's an impressive feat of memory and consciousness. Mastai considers not only the workings, but the consequences (and there are many) of time travel, packing so much into the last 100 pages it feels as if there's literal weight pressing on your mind. "Existence is not a thing with which to muck around," and yet that's exactly what fantastic storytelling attempts, warping reality, perception, and truth--and hopefully entertaining us as well as this novel does.

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October 1, 2016

This debut novel is built on a clever premise: the "real" present actually was a technological wonder, as visualized in postwar America. It was a world where every problem was solved by technology; a universe of flying cars and synthetic solutions. This was the actual present, but the narrator, Tom Barron, erased it when he altered the time line by mistake. Our current state of technology pales by comparison. The novel goes on to show how Tom screwed up and in doing so casts a distinct contrast between Tom in the techno-future and his character as he ends up in our time. Here he inherits a better life, just not "his" life. In describing the narrator's attempt to fix his "mistake," Mastai creates a fascinating tapestry of interconnected alternate realities. Particularly creepy is the introduction of the specter of a third, even darker possibility, which leavens the plot. VERDICT A potent mixture of sincere introspection and a riveting examination of time travel and alternate realities, this highly recommended novel is reminiscent of Jo Walton's My Real Children with the breeziness of Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. [See Prepub Alert, 8/22/16.]--Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2016

It's 2016 as imagined in the 1950s; cars fly, the moon is inhabited, and punk rock never existed because, hey, life is good. Not quite at home in this shiny utopia, Tom Barren makes a rash decision that changes the world around him and lands him in our 2016. Should he try to make a go of it in this chaotic new setting he rather likes? A big debut that buzzed at Frankfurt, with rights sold to 25 countries and film rights sold to Paramount.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.