“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow”, Gabrielle Zevin
Published July 5, 2022
In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.
On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.
“It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”
Tomorrow³ is the kind of tender, sprawling, deeply human story that sneaks up on you. I’ll admit, it took me a while to get into it. The opening chapters moved too slowly for me. It laid down the foundation of Sam and Sadie’s complicated friendship with such subtle care—something I failed to appreciate at first. I realize how essential all that groundwork was, and how those slow, early moments built the emotional gravity that would hit me like a freight train later on.
By the time I finished the book—somewhere mid-flight between California and Virginia—I was openly sobbing in seat 17A. No shame, just heartbreak. Zevin crafted a story about (platonic) friendship, love, manic creativity, and devastating grief. It’s about game design, yes, but it’s also about the messy, glorious act of building a life with others, and the ways we fail and forgive and keep trying. In this case, over decades.
The chapter centered around Marx brought me to my knees (figuratively, as there is barely any room in Delta economy for shenanigans). It was so crushing that I’m honestly still not over it, three years later.
BONUS: If you happen to read this book and love it just as much as I do, might I also suggest the series Mythic Quest on Apply TV. The episodes “Dark Quiet Death” (S1E5) and “Sarian” (S3E7) are very Tomorrow³-coded.
Content Warnings
Note: This is not an exhaustive list of content and trigger warnings.
gun violence • death • suicide • death of parent • mass shooting • grief • toxic relationships • medical trauma • homophobia
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Owned: hardcover from Amazon