Tom has just 20 seconds to save the world. But which world will he choose?

You know the future that people in the fifties imagined we'd have? Flying cars, food pills and moon bases? Well, it happened. And it's just as great as we hoped it would be. Except, in this world, a series of heartbreaks leaves Tom alone. So he hijacks his father's time machine, and goes back to where it all began - the moment when the world as we know it, and the world as Tom lives it, parted ways, due to a ground-breaking experiment.

Only, thanks to Tom's accidental intrusion, the experiment fails and he returns 'home' to find his world erased and replaced with our own 2016 - by comparison, a chaotic mess. In our world, however, Tom discovers vastly improved versions of his family, his career, and - best of all - his soulmate, Penny. So. Should he fix the flow of history, bringing back into existence his old utopian reality, or to try to forge a new life in our messy one?

Reviewed by Olivia at Angus & Robertson Bookworld:

The lure of time travel is almost irresistible to sci-fi writers, so much so that one begins to wonder whether or not there are any original stories left to tell. Elan Mastai’s vividly inventive debut novel All Our Wrong Todays doesn’t so much seek to answer that question, presenting instead a fresh new twist on an old moral dilemma: would you catastrophically change the course of history if it meant you could have the life (and the girl) of your dreams?

I’ll leave that for the reader to find out, but for now I’ll just say this: All Our Wrong Todays is a seamless blend of sci-fi and contemporary fiction, with a little bit of romance thrown in, mixed with a healthy dash of self-deprecating wit that feels fresh and imaginative. By day, Elan Mastai is a screenwriter and it shows in the highly visual quality of his writing - while the ideas and the science underlying his story certainly feel far-fetched, they are grounded in enough imaginative detail that you’re willing to believe it for the sake of the story. With Tom Barren, Mastai has also written a distinctly unlikeable hero (or antihero, if you were to ask Tom) who is significantly redeemed by the self-deprecating humour of his narration and his awareness of his own failings.

Despite the wry pessimism of the narrative voice, this novel has undeniable heart and warmth to it, and you should read this book if you’re after a refreshing take on an already beloved genre.