Preconceptions and assumptions can be dangerous, or at least misleading. I thought Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin was time-travel SF – I guess I didn’t recognise the Shakespeare reference. But perhaps if I had, I’d have expected something very heavy and “worthy”, and might not ever have read it. Which would have been a true shame as this is a gorgeous novel.

Sam and Sadie first meet in the 1980s as 10-year-olds in an LA hospital and bond by playing computer games. Sam is a patient; Sadie’s sister is a patient. For a while they’re best friends, until an argument leads to them not speaking.

Years later while at university they meet in a train station in Boston, where they are both studying. They gradually grow to be close friends again but old habits die hard and failing to tell each other the whole truth leads to years of misunderstandings and resentments.

Computer games are central to this book. Sadie plans to be a game designer, and is studying under a famous young game designer at MIT called Dov. Sam’s degree at Harvard is in maths and he isn’t sure where he hopes it will lead. Sadie is one of very few women in a male-dominated field. Sam is from a family who don’t have much money surrounded by trust fund kids.

“Sadie wondered if most gamers would be turned on by this. She often had to put herself into a male point of view to even understand the game at all. As Dov was fond of saying to her, ‘You aren’t just a gamer when you play anymore. You’re a builder of worlds, and if you’re a builder of worlds, your feelings are not as important as what your gamers are feeling…’ Sadie the gamer found this scene sexist and strange…Sadie the world builder accepted that the game was made by one of the most creative minds in gaming.”

When Sadie asks Sam for feedback on her early attempts at game design he realises he wants them to create a game together. And this begins a whole career that ties them together by finance and reputation even when their friendship is at a low ebb.

The other major character is Marx, who is Sam’s roommate at college. Sam has struggled with foot pain since that childhood hospital stay but he never says anything out loud. Marx recognises this and quietly takes care of his friend without drawing attention to his acts of kindness. This pattern continues after college.

The book tackles some big themes in a quietly radical way. For instance, each character’s race is part of who they are and how they were raised – it doesn’t define them but it’s important to their story. Sadie is Jewish and the first game she designs is inspired by her grandmother’s experience of the Holocaust. Sam is half-Korean and spent much of his childhood in his grandparents’ restaurant in LA’s Koreatown – where he played a Donkey Kong machine for hours on end. Marx is half-Japanese, half-Korean, which he quickly discovers is a major limiting factor to his dream of becoming an actor.

More than one character in the novel is bisexual and I appreciate that this is not a big deal to anyone. Or at least not to any of the main characters. But then they – or Sam and Sadie at least – are idealists. They are striving to create perfect art, perfect gameplay, perfect worlds.

Of course, Sam and Sadie are not themselves perfect. They are bad at handling fame in particular. In fact, at times they are poster children for why you shouldn’t go into business with your best friend. But their love for each other goes deeper than misunderstandings, even if they don’t say it out loud nearly as often as they should.

Something unusual about this novel is its style, which is like a series of long magazine profiles. It is written as though the imagined reader already knows the names and fame of Sam and Sadie but not the whole true story. At times it includes “quotes” from their interviews or press conferences. Somehow, Zevin not only makes this work but also manages within this structure to give us the sometimes very different perspectives of the main characters.

“One of Sam’s eventual strengths as an artist and as a businessman was that he knew the importance of drama, of setting the scene. He wanted to ask her to work with him at a special place – the occasion of their creative union should be memorable…He was already imagining Sam-and-Sadie lore, and he didn’t even have a definitive idea for a game yet. But this was classic Sam – he had learned to tolerate the sometimes-painful present by living in the future.”

The novel is packed with references. To computer games, of course. And also to literature, film, poetry, philosophy, art, history – everything that’s an influence on Sam and Sadie. But that makes it sound smug and weighty, which it really isn’t. This book is a joy to read. It’s geeky and generous and beautifully told.

Published 2022 by Alfred A Knopf.

Source: Heron Books, Bristol