The term All Tomorrows has become a cultural touchstone, representing a unique intersection of speculative fiction, evolutionary biology, and cosmic horror. At its core lies C.M. Kosemen's seminal work, All Tomorrows: The Myriad Species and Mixed Fortunes of Man, a book that charts a billion-year saga of human evolution and devolution at the hands of alien overlords. This narrative of radical transformation and existential dread has resonated deeply, spawning discussions and inspiring connections across various creative mediums.
The Speculative Biology Spectrum: From Yesterdays to Tomorrows
To fully appreciate All Tomorrows, one must also consider its conceptual sibling, All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals. While All Tomorrows projects humanity into a terrifyingly alien future, All Yesterdays reimagines the past, challenging rigid paleoart conventions with speculative behaviors and soft tissue reconstructions of dinosaurs. Together, they form the twin pillars of modern speculative biology, one looking back with creative rigor and the other gazing forward with horrific imagination. This fascinating duality is explored in depth in the blog post All Yesterdays vs. All Tomorrows: Speculative Biology's Twin Masterpieces.
Cosmic Horror: A Shared Lineage with Lovecraft and Giger
The existential terror of All Tomorrows is deeply rooted in the tradition of cosmic horror. The feeling of humanity's insignificance against vast, uncaring cosmic forces is a hallmark of H.P. Lovecraft's work. This connection is made visually explicit in adaptations like H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu (Manga), which translates his primordial dread into a gripping graphic novel format. The themes of unknowable entities and bodily transformation create a clear bridge to Kosemen's work, as discussed in All Tomorrows & Lovecraftian Horror: Exploring Cosmic Dread in Manga.
Furthermore, the biomechanical nightmares of the Star People and the Qu find a visual parallel in the art of H.R. Giger. The nightmarish fusion of flesh, machine, and alien sexuality in Giger's work, celebrated in volumes like HR Giger. 45th Ed., embodies a similar aesthetic of evolutionary horror. Both artists explore the terror of the body remade by external, inhuman forces. For a guided tour through this shared aesthetic, see All Tomorrows & HR Giger: A Guide to Sci-Fi's Evolutionary & Biomechanical Nightmares.
Gaming the Apocalypse: From Zombies to Cyberpunk Parties
The compelling and horrifying universe of All Tomorrows has naturally inspired tabletop role-playing game content. All Flesh Must be Eaten: All Tomorrows Zombies is a supplement for the horror RPG All Flesh Must Be Eaten by Eden Studios. It allows players to experience the apocalyptic fiction and evolutionary horror of Kosemen's world firsthand, battling or surviving as the bizarre post-human species. A detailed analysis can be found in All Tomorrows Zombies: A Sci-Fi Horror RPG Supplement Review & Guide.
On a different literary front, the phrase "All Tomorrow's Parties" evokes William Gibson's cyberpunk vision. All Tomorrow's Parties (Bridge Trilogy Book 3) concludes his Bridge trilogy, exploring a near-future of corporate control, virtual realities, and urban decay. While tonally different from Kosemen's biological fiction, it shares a concern with humanity's future and the forces that shape it. The blog All Tomorrow's Parties: William Gibson's Bridge Trilogy Finale Explained delves into this cyberpunk classic.
Cultural Echoes: Music, Memory, and Literary Fiction
The title itself is a nod to the Velvet Underground's iconic song, immortalized in All Tomorrow's Parties: The Velvet Underground Story, a definitive music biography of the legendary 1960s Music and counterculture band. This connection adds a layer of melancholic, avant-garde artistry to the phrase.
Beyond sci-fi and horror, the theme of "tomorrows" resonates in literary fiction as well. All the Tomorrows After presents an emotional novel and family saga that explores the passage of time, legacy, and personal connection—a human-scale counterpart to the cosmic scale of Kosemen's work. Similarly, All Yesterday’s Papers touches on memory and the past, completing a thematic circle from yesterday to tomorrow.
In conclusion, the legacy of All Tomorrows extends far beyond its original pages. It has become a lens through which we examine our deepest fears about evolution, identity, and the future. It connects the speculative science of All Yesterdays, the visceral horror of Lovecraft and Giger, the interactive narratives of tabletop RPGs, the dystopian visions of cyberpunk, and the reflective depth of literary fiction. It is a testament to the power of a single, terrifyingly creative idea to propagate across the ecosystem of human imagination, inspiring book reviews, discussions, and new artistic creations that continue to explore the myriad possibilities—and horrors—of all our tomorrows.