TOMORROW BRINGS JOY

In Mahyar and Mahbod Amouzegar’s SF novel, podmates from a utopian colony search for answers about a missing pod member who questioned their society.

The year is 2178. Elysium is a harmonious society in which everybody looks the same, with “brown eyes, brown hair, and a similar build,” despite being born in different pods at the hatchery. The inhabitants’ food is synthesized, libido has been eliminated, and emotions are regulated. Each person has a “faint blue light” in their wrist connecting them to a “Direct Data Transfer system” and the “Information Visualization System.” After growing up on the Farm with thousands of other children in pods, Dolores and her “podies” are one year away from adulthood. They live independently and take higher education classes aligned with a chosen profession. On their 25th birthday, the members of Pod-081053-05 meet and painfully reminisce about their lost brother, Darius. The reason for Darius’ disappearance hinges on “his high probability of aberration from the start,” which, in addition to a minor aesthetic point of differentiation, appears to be ideological in nature. When Destiny, his close friend from another pod, returns to Dolores’ and fellow podmate Demi’s lives, she reveals that Darius was questioning Elysium before his disappearance. Wondering why the Elysium residents “walk blindly into fates [Darius] could never understand,” the trio begin to follow his trail beyond the wall that surrounds Elysium and make shocking discoveries about the utopia’s origins. The Amouzegar brothers have created compelling societies in Elysium and the Walled City, paying careful attention to interpersonal relationships. The exploratory journey that Dolores, Demi, and Destiny take to test the boundaries of Elysium is engaging and unites the major plot strands neatly. Many philosophical questions are raised—including the ethics of android servitude—but the troubling issue of eugenics in Elysium is overlooked in favor of other quandaries.

A provocative and philosophical exploration of humanity in a fragile future affected by heavy history.