'Then in more recent years, I noticed the rise of dystopian pop culture, whether in YA novels or TV or films. I think as I got older, I was wondering what happened to that future we were promised.

The expos really defined our vision of the future, but it feels like after Expo 86, we stopped dreaming of the same futures, or at least they started to seem a lot less likely. Expo 86 was the last World's Fair ever hosted in North America. 'The second main inspiration was Expo 86 in Vancouver. Part of the genesis of this idea was thinking of someone from my grandfather's generation arriving in 2016 and being horrified that the science-first, utopian future they were imagining was just around the corner never happened. But I was aware of this disconnect - that our reality, our world, didn't happen the way the books depicted it to be. I loved staring at these garish paintings of robots and rocket ships and futuristic cities. He also had an extensive collection of 1950s and 1960s sci-fi novels.

He really believed in his core that science was the answer to all the problems of the future. The first comes from my grandfather, who was a chemist. 'There were three main sources of inspiration for this book, spread out over decades. The inspiration behind All Our Wrong Todays

How Elan Mastai time-warped his way to a debut novel.

Elan Mastai is one of CBC Books' 17 writers to watch in 2017.

Does he fix the flow of history, bringing his utopian universe back into existence, or does he try to forge a new life in our messy, unpredictable reality? ( From Penguin Random House) For Tom, our normal reality seems like a dystopian wasteland.īut when he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career, and - maybe, just maybe - his soulmate, Tom has a decision to make. In a time-travel mishap, Tom finds himself stranded in our 2016, what we think of as the real world. Utterly blindsided by an accident of fate, Tom makes a rash decision that drastically changes not only his own life but the very fabric of the universe itself. Except Tom just can't seem to find his place in this dazzling, idealistic world, and that's before his life gets turned upside down. In Tom Barren's 2016, humanity thrives in a techno-utopian paradise of flying cars, moving sidewalks and moon bases, where avocados never go bad and punk rock never existed. You know the future that people in the 1950s imagined we'd have? Well, it happened.

15 books make the Canada Reads 2019 longlist.

The 2019 debates will take place March 25-28, 2019 and will be hosted by Ali Hassan. Canada Reads 2019 is about finding one book to move you. The final five books and the panellists defending them will be revealed on Jan. All Our Wrong Todays is on the Canada Reads 2019 longlist.

All the wrong todays