Most avid readers have their favorite authors, and 2024 has been been merciful to a few of mine. Terry Bisson and Howard Waldrop both passed away, taking with them unique, meaningful voices of speculative fiction. And the year likewise took Christopher Priest, a giant in the field. A book published just two years ago, Expect Me Tomorrow (2022).
Expect Me Tomorrow rotates through three time periods/perspectives, steadily revealing the relationship between them. Told in brief, dry snippets akin to a history book, the first perspective is the story of a Victorian confidence trickster named John Smith who was found guilty of cheating women out of their valuables. The second is told in a warm, first-person perspective with a classic English lilt. It tells of a pair of Norwegian twins in the mid 19th century, Adolph and Adler. Night and day in terms of career interests, Adler is an academic researcher interested in climate who ends up spending many years in the US pursuing knowledge while his brother Adolph is an opera singer who tours South America. And the third perspective is an alternate take on our modern times, written in Priest's precise prose, in which a police profiler has a piece of network tech installed in his head giving him direct access to the internet. Disparate stories at the outset, Priest slowly weaves these three into a single tale.