Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (2022)

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a 2022 novel by Gabrielle Zevin. The novel follows the relationship between two friends who begin a successful video game company together. It is Zevin's fifth novel for adults and tenth novel overall.

Premise

Set over the course of several decades, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow follows video game developers Sadie Green and Sam Masur, childhood friends who reunite while both studying at universities in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Along with Sam's roommate and friend Marx Watanabe, Sam and Sadie begin developing a video game and later co-manage a successful video game studio, Unfair Games.

Plot

In the 1980s, adolescents Sam Masur and Sadie Green meet in a pediatric hospital. Sadie's older sister, Alice, is being treated for childhood leukemia, while Sam is undergoing multiple surgeries on his foot, which was crushed in the car crash that killed his mother. Having become selectively mute since the crash, Sam spends all his time playing games on the Nintendo Entertainment System in the hospital game room. Nurses encourage Sadie to play with him; having someone to share games with causes Sam to begin speaking again and the pair become best friends. Finding out that spending time with Sam can count as community service as required for her bat mitzvah, Sadie begins tallying her hours at the hospital, though she values her time with Sam more than fulfilling the requirement. After her recovery, a jealous Alice tells Sam about the tally sheet, which deeply offends him, having believed that Sadie spent time with him out of obligation rather than genuine friendship. Sam and Sadie stop speaking and don't see one another again for six years.

The pair reunite by chance at a train station in Boston when both are nineteen. Sam is studying math at Harvard and Sadie computer science at MIT. Still suffering issues with his foot, Sam lives off-campus with Marx, an amateur Shakespearean acting student who has come to see Sam as the brother he always wanted as a child. Sadie impulsively asks Sam to playtest a video game she programmed for a software design class and he agrees. Sam and Marx play the game and are impressed to discover it to be a simulation that tricks the player into believing they are building mundane factory parts when in fact they are manufacturing equipment for the Nazis during the Holocaust. Meanwhile, Sadie's professor, Dov, a successful game programmer in his own right, becomes enamored with Sadie due to the game. The two begin an affair and Dov begins mentoring Sadie on how to become a better programmer. Their relationship ultimately crumbles when the married Dov decides to return to his wife.

Sadie falls into a deep depression and stops eating and bathing. Sam begins visiting her, and eventually convinces her to program a game together with him. Sadie moves in with Sam and Marx and they convert the apartment into a game studio called Unfair Games with Marx as their producer. Sam and Sadie conceptualize Ichigo, an adventure game about a child lost at sea who must find their way back home. Struggling to develop a graphics engine, Sam encourages Sadie to ask Dov for his own, and the two resume their affair. With Dov acting as a producer and equity partner for Ichigo, Sadie and Sam complete the game. Unfair Games is offered the choice between a lucrative distribution deal from Opus, a large company, that will take away creative control of Ichigo and require a sequel or a more modest offer that gives them more freedom. Sam and Dov pressure Sadie into accepting the former.

Ichigo becomes a pop culture phenomenon and Sam and Sadie become celebrities, though Sadie bristles at game journalists' sexist assumptions that Sam contributed more to the game and company. As Sadie and Dov's relationship progresses, Dov takes more control over Sadie. Sadie and Sam's relationship further deteriorates over the question of whether he had, in essence, prostituted her to Dov in exchange for help with Ichigo's graphics. Sam advertises Ichigo to Opus' demands and Sadie works on the Ichigo sequel.

Sam wishes to work on an Ichigo 3 in favor of working on Sadie's dream project, an elaborate RPG called Both Sides that takes place between alternate realities. Sam, Sadie, and Marx move to Los Angeles to establish Unfair as a corporate entity. Sadie uses this opportunity to break up with Dov. Both Sides is a commercial and critical failure. Over a trip to Japan, Marx and Sadie connect and begin dating, during the trip Marx has a revelation dream to create a spin off to Both Sides' idyllic American suburb of Mapletown into an online RPG called Mapleworld, which proves to be the company's greatest success. Sam's jealousy of Sadie and Marx's relationship and Sadie's discomfort with Sam gaining credit for their work further drives a wedge between them.

While Unfair produces several lucrative games outside of Sadie and Sam's partnership, Sadie argues with Sam that Unfair's next project should be Master of the Revels, a Shakespearean-themed interactive mystery drama, action-adventure game. Sam initially balks, and she develops the game on her own. Upon playing its demo, though, he compliments her work. It proves to be another success and Sam and Sadie go on tour to promote it for the Christmas 2005 season. In their absence, an attacker comes to the Unfair Headquarters looking for Sam, angry that he legalized gay marriage in Mapleworld. In Sam's absence, the extremist murders Marx before shooting himself.