Tomorrow Never Knows

by Eddie Robson

The city of Loreto, hanging in the atmosphere of Jupiter, has seen better days as a trading port. By the late 22nd century, it's become a hive of borderline illegal activity, but also a magnet for bohemian types from across the Jupiter colonies. Ashton Lang, a psychically gifted scholarship student from Europa, is looking forward to spending her summer working in the city - until her only friend there, struggling artist Winter DeMattis, receives a grant and disappears off to Io, leaving Ashton to fend for herself. Winter is on Io to research a dull public commission, but the trip will change her life irrevocably. Meanwhile Magic Alex - a minister in a church which worships The Beatles - is trying to find who has framed him for the murder of his blackmailer, a quest which brings him into contact with artificial savant Tomas Darrell. Tomas is new in town after losing his job on Callisto, but in Loreto he finds a new purpose: proving his suspicion that the entire city is doomed.

Genres: Science Fiction

416 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2015

About the author

Eddie Robson is a comedy and science fiction writer best known for his sitcom Welcome To Our Village, Please Invade Carefully and his work on a variety of spin-offs from the BBC Television series Doctor Who. He has written books, comics and short stories, and has worked as a freelance journalist for various science fiction magazines. He is married to a female academic and lives in Lancaster.

Robson's comedy writing career began in 2008 with material for Look Away Now. Since then his work has featured on That Mitchell and Webb Sound, Tilt, Play and Record, Newsjack, Recorded For Training Purposes and The Headset Set. The pilot episode of his sitcom Welcome To Our Village, Please Invade Carefully was broadcast on BBC Radio 2 on 5th July 2012. It starred Katherine Parkinson and Julian Rhind-Tutt.

His Doctor Who work includes the BBC 7 radio plays Phobos, Human Resources and Grand Theft Cosmos, the CD releases Memory Lane, The Condemned, The Raincloud Man and The Eight Truths, and several short stories for Big Finish's Doctor Who anthologies, Short Trips. He has contributed comic strips to Doctor Who Adventures.

Between 2007 and 2009, Robson was the producer of Big Finish's Bernice Summerfield range of products, and has contributed four audio plays to the series. He has also written books on film noir and the Coen Brothers for Virgin Publishing, the Doctor Who episode guide Who's Next with co-authors Mark Clapham and Jim Smith, and an illustrated adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Reviews

[Andrew Lawston · Rating 5 out of 5]

On a city suspended in Jupiter's atmosphere, a selection of artists, students, and savants go about their lives, throwing parties and finding jobs.

In 22nd Century Loreto, Eddie has created a believable world of misfits, bohemians and hustlers, and then let them get on with it. Magic Alex, the "priest" figure at a church worshipping the Beatles, is arrested on suspicion of murder, and befriends savant Tomas, also under arrest. Ashton arrives in Loreto for a summer job, just as her artist friend Winter leaves to work on a public art commission. The characters go about their lives, each with their own motivation, and only towards the novel's very end are the characters' different narrative strands pulled together, despite the connections and coincidences being there from the very outset.

There is a compelling narrative that draws the reader through the book, but this is conveyed through the apparently everyday interactions of the characters in Loreto's 22nd Century world. The city's society and inhabitants have terrific depth as a result.

It's also effortlessly entertaining. While the Beatles church sounds like a one-gag gimmick, Eddie invests serious effort in Magic Alex's sermons. Why NOT follow the teachings of Saint Paul or Saint John? By the end of the book, it seems as good a way as any to live your life, and Magic Alex's attention to his pastoral duties (or at least guilt over not carrying them out fully) is a telling clue to a character who begins the book as a very ambiguous individual.

While the church isn't exactly played for laughs, though, there's a huge amount of enjoyably inventive swearing, drugs, and gags about artists.

Tomorrow Never Knows is a great book, and it deserves a wider audience.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this after the other book by Robson because I thought his writing was creative and fun to read. I appreciate what he is trying to do with this book, but it is certainly less refined than the other book. (Both stand alones, as far as I can tell, which is also nice!)
Perhaps, looking at his other work, better constructed as a screen play?

[Simon Jerram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely stuff.

[Joy Stephenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this story imaginative and engaging. The only problem was the ending, as all the plot strands were tied up very quickly and an explanation given rather than shown.

[AJA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dang I enjoyed the heck outta that. Even more so than the later novels.

[Hannah Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not much of a science fiction reader so was a tad nervous heading into this. I bought it solely because I'd enjoyed Eddie Robson's radio series, 'Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully'. I did have to force myself to persist through the first few chapter as though the plot was good, I found the futuristic language a bit too much to take in initially. The book flits between different characters and their different strands inevitably begin to interweave. I enjoyed Eddie Robson's depiction of a future that seemed rather realistic and not entirely pessimistic. His take on religion was also entertaining. It's a nicely paced novel and once I'd got into the characters I lost hours to it.