''All Tomorrows: A Billion Year Chronicle of the Myriad Species and Mixed Fortunes of Man'' is a 2006 work of

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

and

speculative evolution Speculative evolution is a subgenre of science fiction and an artistic movement focused on hypothetical scenarios in the evolution of life, and a significant form of Biology in fiction, fictional biology. It is also known as speculative biology an ...

written and illustrated by the Turkish artist C. M. Kosemen under the

pen name A pen name or nom-de-plume is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen name may be used to make the author's na ...

Nemo Ramjet. It explores a hypothetical future path of

human evolution ''Homo sapiens'' is a distinct species of the hominid family of primates, which also includes all the great apes. Over their evolutionary history, humans gradually developed traits such as Human skeletal changes due to bipedalism, bipedalism, de ...

set from the near future to a billion years from the present. Several future human species evolve through natural means and through

genetic engineering Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification or genetic manipulation, is the modification and manipulation of an organism's genes using technology. It is a set of Genetic engineering techniques, technologies used to change the genet ...

, conducted by both humans themselves and by a mysterious and superior hive mind called the Qu. Inspired by the science fiction works of

Olaf Stapledon William Olaf Stapledon (10 May 1886 – 6 September 1950) was an English philosopher and author of science fiction.Andy Sawyer, " illiamOlaf Stapledon (1886-1950)", in Bould, Mark, et al, eds. ''Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction''. New York ...

and

Edward Gibbon Edward Gibbon (; 8 May 173716 January 1794) was an English essayist, historian, and politician. His most important work, ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', published in six volumes between 1776 and 1789, is known for ...

's ''

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', sometimes shortened to ''Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', is a six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon. The six volumes cover, from 98 to 1590, the peak of the Ro ...

'', Kosemen worked on ''All Tomorrows'' from 2003 to the publication of the book as a free

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

file online in 2006. Kosemen has announced the first English-language print edition of ''All Tomorrows'' in physical form, with new text, updated illustrations, and grammatical fixes. It is set to publish on the 21st of August, 2025

Summary

Centuries following humanity

terraforming Terraforming or terraformation ("Earth-shaping") is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying the atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology of a planet, moon, or other body to be similar to the environment of Earth to mak ...

and colonizing Mars, a brief but catastrophic interplanetary war takes place between

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

and

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

costing both parties billions of lives. The two planets eventually make peace with each other, and a large-scale

colonization 475px, Map of the year each country achieved List of sovereign states by date of formation, independence. Colonization (British English: colonisation) is a process of establishing occupation of or control over foreign territories or peoples f ...

initiative is carried out by genetically engineered humans called Star People throughout the

Milky Way The Milky Way or Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the #Appearance, galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars in other arms of the galax ...

. Humans (now Star People) then encounter a malevolent and superior alien hive mind called the Qu. The Qu's religion motivates them to remake the

universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents. It comprises all of existence, any fundamental interaction, physical process and physical constant, and therefore all forms of matter and energy, and the structures they form, from s ...

through

. A short war follows in which humanity is defeated. The Qu bioengineer the surviving humans as punishment into a range of exotic forms, many of them unintelligent. After forty million years of domination, the Qu leave the galaxy, leaving the altered humans to evolve on their own in the environments and worlds they were left in. The bioengineered humans range from

worm Worms are many different distantly related bilateria, bilateral animals that typically have a long cylindrical tube-like body, no limb (anatomy), limbs, and usually no eyes. Worms vary in size from microscopic to over in length for marine ...

-like beings and

insectivore file:Common brown robberfly with prey.jpg, A Asilidae, robber fly eating a hoverfly An insectivore is a carnivore, carnivorous animal or plant which eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the Entomophagy ...

s to modular and cell-based species. The book follows the progress of these new humans as they either go extinct or regain sapience in wildly different forms and gradually discover that the Qu experimented on them. One species, the Ruin Haunters, replaces their bodies with mechanical forms using the technology the Qu had left. Now known as the Gravitals, they begin to colonize the rest of the galaxy while annihilating most life within it, including the other posthuman species (except the Bug Facers who, like how the Qu treated humanity, are genetically modified by the Gravitals for their own gain). The Gravitals are eventually destroyed by the Asteromorphs, descendants of humans that escaped Qu experimentation who, in a manner again similar to the Qu and the Gravitals themselves, remodify the remaining Gravitals into less-sophisticated laborer machines. The final chapters of the book detail humanity's rebound as a posthuman species, their first contact with another galaxy's life, and the rediscovery and ultimate defeat of the Qu after 500 million years, concluding with the rediscovery of Earth 560 million years in the future. ''All Tomorrows'' ends with a picture of the book's in-universe author, an alien researcher, holding a billion-year-old human skull and writing that all posthuman species disappeared a billion years in the future for unknown reasons. The author goes on to state that mankind's story was always about the lives of humans themselves, not major wars and abstract ideals, ending by encouraging the reader to "Love Today, and seize All Tomorrows!"

Development

Kosemen worked on ''All Tomorrows'' from 2003 to 2006. The work of

, particularly ''

Last and First Men ''Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future'' is a "future history" science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon. A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of humanity from t ...

'' (1930) and ''

Star Maker ''Star Maker'' is a science fiction novel by British writer Olaf Stapledon, published in 1937. Continuing the theme of the author's previous book, ''Last and First Men'' (1930)—which narrated a history of the human species over two billion ...

'' (1937), served as the main inspiration for the work, alongside

's ''

''. ''All Tomorrows'' is written in the style of a historical work, narrated by an alien creature recounting the history of humanity. According to Kosemen, the "tone of voice is a high school student fanboying on the ''Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'' by Edward Gibbon". The artwork is also reflective of this "archaeological" approach, with faded and textured visual effects applied to the paintings. The original reason for adding the faded tint to the paintings was Kosemen wanting to avoid the paintings looking like "horrible racist caricatures". The book was released for free online as a

on 4 October 2006 and has since then, per Kosemen himself, "had a life of its own as a PDF floating around the backwaters of the internet like a ghost ship". One of the common links which ''All Tomorrows'' has been shared through is a

wiki A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...

site dedicated to

speedrunning Speedrunning is the act of playing a video game, or section of a video game, with the goal of completing it as fast as possible. Speedrunning often involves following planned routes, which may incorporate sequence breaking and exploit glitches ...

. The first licensed physical edition of ''All Tomorrows'' was published by Time Publishing in March 2024, in the

Thai language Thai,In or Central Thai (historically Siamese;Although "Thai" and "Central Thai" have become more common, the older term, "Siamese", is still used by linguists, especially when it is being distinguished from other Tai languages (Diller 2008:6 ...

. This edition included the content of the original 2006 book, with a new chapter on the making of the book and some additional artwork by other artists. ''All Tomorrows'' is yet to be physically published in English, however in July 2024 preorders on the crowdfunding site Unbound began for official hardback and e-book editions in the

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

, including additional materials and artwork and the intent to publish 20/21 August 2025.

Reception and legacy

Originally an obscure work, ''All Tomorrows'' slowly gained popularity online following its 2006 publication. In a 2021 podcast interview, Kosemen noted that the generation born right after him (Kosemen having been born in 1984) "really embraced" ''All Tomorrows'', which he believes might partially be due to the "myriad disasters" that have happened in the world since then. The book has received some scholarly attention; in 2020, ''All Tomorrows'' was among the works discussed in Jörg Matthias Determann's book ''Islam, Science Fiction and Extraterrestrial Life'', which explores

astrobiology Astrobiology (also xenology or exobiology) is a scientific field within the List of life sciences, life and environmental sciences that studies the abiogenesis, origins, Protocell, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the univ ...

and science fiction in the

Muslim world The terms Islamic world and Muslim world commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs, politics, and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is ...

. Following the upload of an abridged version of the book's story by YouTuber ''Alt Shift X'' in June 2021, ''All Tomorrows'' saw a particular surge in popularity online during the summer of 2021. Among other things, there was a surge of

internet memes An Internet meme, or meme (, ''MEEM''), is a cultural item (such as an idea, behavior, or style) that spreads across the Internet, primarily through social media platforms. Internet memes manifest in a variety of formats, including images, v ...

based on the book, primarily on

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

and

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

as well as

fan art Fan art or fanart is artwork created by Fan (person), fans of a work of fiction or celebrity depicting events, Character (arts), character, or other aspect of the work. As fan labor, fan art refers to artworks that are not created, commissione ...

based on the creatures in the book. Readers have characterized ''All Tomorrows'' as "bizarre", "inexplicable", "interesting" and "fascinating", and as a work incorporating

body horror Body horror, or biological horror, is a subgenre of horror fiction that intentionally showcases grotesque or psychologically disturbing violations of the human body or of another creature. These violations may manifest through aberrant sex, mutat ...

. Ivan Farkas of Cracked.com called ''All Tomorrows'' "existentially freak-ay" in 2021 and described the artwork as "otherwordly". A 2022 article by Andrea Viscusi on the Italian media website ''Stay Nerd'' compared ''All Tomorrows'' to '' Man After Man'' (1990) by Dougal Dixon, also a work tackling future human evolution, but found the depictions in ''All Tomorrows'' to be "even more disturbing", yet still possible on an "almost subliminal level" to "recognize as our fellow men". In a 2022 article in the lifestyle magazine ''A Little Bit Human'', Allia Luzong considered ''All Tomorrows'' to be a "fun exploration of what could be" but also a serious work with serious themes, particularly noting how humanity's social ills are present throughout the narrative. Kosemen stated in 2021 that though the book had grown popular, he had almost "disowned" ''All Tomorrows'', finding parts of it "a bit cringey". When designing his website and including his different books and projects, Kosemen purposefully left out ''All Tomorrows''. Following the summer of 2021, he has since added the book to his website and intends to eventually publish ''All Tomorrows'' in physical form with new text and illustrations. By 16 October 2022, Kosemen had written the expanded version up until the Qu's conquest of the galaxy. Kosemen stated that the material up until that point amounted to 200 pages, almost twice the length of the entire original book. Kosemen continues to work on the expanded version as of 2024. In April 2024 he has announced the release of a physical copy of the book, but only in Thai language. Although being the original version of the book, it is stated to comprehend a few illustrations made by other artists and a new chapter, with various informations about the species. This new chapter is only available in Thai. At the same time, Kosemen has also stated that he is continuing his work on the new version of the book, that has now reached nearly over 300 pages, with still many species to talk about. Every species has now a deeper lore, and new major plot twists have been added.

References

External links

''All Tomorrows''
– original 2006 PDF version of the book *

' – 2009/2010 Russian translation of ''All Tomorrows'' by Pavel Volkov * – by ''Alt Shift X,'' recommended by C. M. Kosemen himself (see pinned comment)
All Tomorrows
- 2023 Italian translation of ''All Tomorrows'' by D. Lombardo
All Tomorrows
- 2023 Czech translation ''All Tomorrows'' by J. Dubánek
All Tomorrows
- 2022 French translation ''All Tomorrows'' by Lucas G. Blanchard {{Speculative evolution 2006 novels 2006 science fiction novels Turkish science fiction novels Fictional species and races Books about evolution Human evolution books Speculative evolution Novels set on Mars Novels set in the future Novels about genetic engineering Extinction in fiction Fiction books about genocide Evolution in popular culture Internet memes introduced in 2021 Milky Way in fiction

Summary

Development

Reception and legacy

See also

References

External links