Tomorrow x3

I just finished listening to Gabrielle Zevin’s wildly popular novel, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, the title taken from Macbeth’s soliloquy of despair:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
 – Shakespeare’s Macbeth

And this is the truth of any game. It can only exist at the moment that it is being played…. in the end all we can ever know is the game that was being played in the only world that we know. (Tomorrowx3)

I am not a video gamer, but that did not keep me from enjoying this story, which is set into the culture of video game design. How shall we navigate our way to inevitable dusty death? What will our choices mean? Against loss, struggle, and grief,  Zevin writes creativity, art, and friendship into this story, thereby offering anchors of possibility for this, here, now.