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Christopher Priest’s latest novel, Expect Me Tomorrow, is a novel of twins and doubles. It takes place in two time frames, past and future, the former in the late nineteenth century (edging a few years into the twentieth by the end), and the latter in the mid-twenty-first century. In each time period, the novel centers on a pair of twin brothers, in each case focusing on one more than the other. And its themes, too, are twinned: it is a novel about both crime and climate, suspicion and science, drawn together by the theme of the complexities of evidence. Christopher Priest, standing on the threshhold of his ninth decade, has written sixteen novels prior to this one over the course of a career of fifty-odd years, as well as a variety of story collections, movie tie-ins, and a notorious polemic about Harlan Ellison. (He has not, however, written comics: this Christopher Priest is not to be confused with the comics writer of the same name.) Priest's most famous novel is probably The Prestige, since it was made into a superb film by Christopher Nolan, and films these days are more famous than novels, and are usually the path to whatever fame the latter might manage. Priest is known for his spare, precise prose and the complex ambiguities and puzzling epistemology in his novels, and in Expect Me Tomorrow he furthers this reputation.
The main characters of the novel are the twins Adolf and Adler Beck, born 1841, and Charles and George Ramsey, born 2002, as well plus the wives of Adler and Charles, and a mysterious nineteenth-century con-man going by the alias John Smith. Adler is an early climate scientist, drawn into it from his study of glaciers; Adolf is an opera singer who is eventually charged with various crimes. George and Charles are descendants of the Becks who are living in a world suffering the devastating effects of climate change, and who find themselves investigating the facts of two fairly separate enigmas: the lives of their nineteenth-century ancestors, and issues within cutting-edge mid-twenty-first century climate science (although neither of the Ramseys is a scientist). To say more of the connections and parallels between the two pairs, of the criminal trials that feature in the book, or of the climate science portrayed within it, would be to rob readers of their enjoyment of it, for it is a book filled with, and reliant upon, mysteries.
This is not unusual for Priest, whose writing is usually elusive—not through lack of clarity, but through the mystery of how the various parts fit together, and what light the various stories are supposed to cast upon each other. Expect me Tomorrow is a book that speaks simply—on the Hemingway-to-Nabokov scale, it is closer to the Hemingway end, although unlike Popa, Priest has no fear of nested subordinate clauses nor a reluctance to drive readers to the dictionary. But simple though its language can be, it suggests more than it says, leaving the reader wondering rather than satisfied at the end. For some, however, this will be a deeply enjoyable experience: most novels these days are desperate for accessibility, as eager to be embraced as a dog in search of a lap, and in such works for the reader to be confused or puzzled or have to put forward effort is considered a failure, not a success, on the part of the author; in those terms, this novel is a failure. But for those who seek a richer reading experience, who think a tougher climb leads to a more glorious view, will rightly see this as a recommendation, not a dismissal. This is a book for those who believe that novels ought to have their complexities and readers their trials.
For this reviewer, however, the most complex issues in this novel involve its relation to the truth. On the copyright page appears the familiar boilerplate language claiming that "All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental", but in this case this is flatly untrue. Two of the book's characters, Adolf Beck and the man calling himself "John Smith", were in fact real historical people: four photographs of them (two each) are reproduced in the book, as are several handwriting samples; three books about Adolf Beck (all of which necessarily also discuss "John Smith") are nestled into the bibliography amongst nearly a score of books about climate change. Yet many of the background facts about Beck are invented: in particular Beck's twin brother, Adler—with whom the novel spends more time than with Adolf, although both are central to the narrative— is Priest's invention, which necessitates a lot of other diversions from the details of the real Adolf Beck's life, even as the most famous parts of the latter are faithfully rendered.
So far this is all reasonable, and the reader may assuage their curiosity as to the facts about Adolf Beck either from Wikipedia, or from one of the three books about him that Priest cites. (Although if the reader has not heard of Adolf Beck before—and he is definitely an obscure figure, save perhaps to British lawyers—then I urge them not to google him before reading the book: Priest tells Beck's story well, and it is a story which is improved by its surprises.) Things get trickier, however, in the other central realm of the story, namely climate science.
The novel contains a great deal of exposition of this science, past and future; both the plot of the book and much of its interest comes from these sections, as well as more generally its portrayal of both the nature of climate science in the 19th century, how and in what conditions it was done, and the possibilities for its future several decades from now. While the novel's history seems mostly reliable (there are a few minor details which are questionable—I doubt someone would refer to Florida as a "new" state in 1869, 24 years after it had become one, with ten other new states being created in the interim; and the immigration restrictions placed upon Adolf upon his mid-nineteenth century entry into the U.S. are anachronistic), I can't myself vouch for its climate science. Some of it is clearly fictionalized—Adler Beck, being a fictional character, published no discoveries—but some of it is true and checkable: I, for one, did not know that Benjamin Franklin had been the first to name the Gulf Stream and was interested to learn it. But in regards much of the novel's scientific freight, including the core scenario that unfolds (and is discovered) over the course of the story, I simply don't know how likely or plausible it is. Yet I think readers need to know; and certainly it the truth of the matter makes a very big difference in how the book ought to be taken.
Don't get me wrong; Expect me Tomorrow is not is not in any way a climate change denialist book—the mid-twenty-first century setting is, in fact, a vivid and persuasive portrait of a world suffering from the impacts of climate change, neither utterly apocalyptic nor blithely manageable, but in the midst of slow and painful worstening; this portrayal is one of the book's highlights. Nor should the novel be criticized for portraying the confusions, intra-field arguments, and doubts as to specifics which are the actual stuff of climate science (and, indeed, are common to all knowledge): as that is simply how science works, and it would be wrong to cringe in the face of possible misprision and omit them. But in the end I really wanted to know how to take to specifics. I suppose if one were to read all seventeen books on climate science in Priest's bibliography one might learn, but this is a novel, not a research project, and I think a clear and unhedged declaration about what is and is not fictional in it (and, in the case of future science, what is and is not grounded in speculation by contemporary scientists, rather than being entirely Priest's own invention) was sorely needed: an afterward would have added a great deal to this book. This need is not simply a matter of curiosity, nor intellectual clarity about a vital political issue; it affects the aesthetics of the novel. The novel, as I have said, weaves together two strands of inquiry into mystery, one about a series of criminal trials, and one about various possibilities and debates within climate science. The former, being mostly straightforwardly historical, points, by the novel's end, to some intriguing epistemological lessons, and presumably we are to see the book's portrayal of climate science in their light. But without some sense of whether the climate science of 2050 which George and Charles Ramsey uncover is within the realm of scientific plausibility, however unlikely, or whether on the other hand it was simply created for narrative purposes (as, for instance, the ultimate connection between Adler Beck and Charles Ramsey, which provides the novel's most outré bit of science fiction, unquestionably was), exactly what that light is, or means, is hard to know. And this is a book where the development of knowledge is at least as compelling as the lives of the characters: that is what keeps us on the hook. And it is a lack of clarity about that, more than the ambiguous endings the characters stroll off toward, that really bothers—especially since this, unlike the mysteries in Priest's other works, depend not upon interpretation of this text but upon a high-level knowledge of a scientific field.
So I can't quite recommend this book, at least not unconditionally. Much of what was best in it was expository, not dramatic—but for that to work, it needed a clearer line between what was fictional, what was speculative, and what was simply a plot device . While the story, or stories, in the book are good ones, they would read and mean very differently if one knew precisely how to take their relation to the truth of the past and to the plausible scenarios for the future—to what we ought in fact to expect tomorrow. And that, unfortunately, Priest doesn't give us. The glory of Priest's earlier work are its aesthetic and intra-fictional epistemological complexities; but they interface poorly with the pressing questions about a very real science, with dramatic political implications. Priest is a writer who spins ambiguities: but here he has, I fear, taken on a topic ill-suited to his style of weaving. For all that, the book is definitely enjoyable, and readers whose tolerance for extra-literary, politically-charged ambiguity and mystery is greater than mine should definitely attempt it, while even readers who are bothered by the same questions nagging me can enjoy the vividly realized England of 2050 and the true, and rather stunning, tale of the unfortunate Mr. Adolf Beck.
Author’s note: I wrote this review for the web-journal the Ancillary Review of Books, which had earlier published my review of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. They liked it, but said it was too long. (It was nearly twice their stated maximum; on the other hand, it was roughly half the length of my KSR review, which they did publish.) They said—either to encourage or dismiss me—that they liked it as is, though, and I should publish it elsewhere rather than have them cut it. I—egotistically but also I think rightly—agreed, so here it is.
Update: Rashly, I sent this review to Mr. Priest, and he kindly replied. He says the science in the book is all “respectable and real”. So that solidifies the novel in my mind considerably. (I wish there had been a brief afterward to that effect, or something of the sort.) He also noted that the sentence “all persons, living or dead…” was added by the publishers, not him—which of course I knew (it’s in every book), but I am sorry if I implied the untruth was his responsibility.