The term All Tomorrows has become a cultural touchstone, representing a fascinating 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 future history of humanity, transformed by alien intervention into bizarre and often terrifying new forms. This concept has sparked a rich ecosystem of related media, from paleontological speculation to tabletop gaming, each exploring themes of transformation, dread, and the fragility of identity.
The Speculative Biology Spectrum: From Yesterdays to Tomorrows
The creative impulse behind All Tomorrows finds a fascinating parallel in All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals. While one looks forward, the other looks back, both challenging our perceptions of life. All Yesterdays applies the same imaginative, speculative biology to dinosaurs, suggesting behaviors and appearances far beyond the skeletons in museums. Together, these works form twin pillars of a movement that asks us to think beyond the evidence, to envision the full, living reality of creatures separated from us by deep time. This approach is a hallmark of modern paleoart and biological fiction.
Converging Nightmares: All Tomorrows and the Legacy of Cosmic Horror
The existential dread permeating All Tomorrows is deeply rooted in the tradition of cosmic horror. The sense of humanity's insignificance against vast, uncaring forces is a thread that connects Kosemen's work directly to H.P. Lovecraft. This connection is made visually explicit in adaptations like H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu (Manga). The graphic novel format brings a similar visceral, illustrative power to Lovecraft's tales as the artwork in All Tomorrows brings to its evolutionary nightmares. Both explore the theme of cosmic dread, where the horror comes not from monsters under the bed, but from the realization that the universe is profoundly alien and indifferent.
This thematic lineage continues in works like All the Fiends of Hell, a novel that explores apocalyptic fiction through a similar lens of sudden, world-shattering horror. Furthermore, the biomechanical aesthetic often associated with humanity's altered forms in All Tomorrows finds its ultimate artistic expression in the work of H.R. Giger. The HR Giger. 45th Ed. is a stunning art book that showcases the biomechanical nightmares that have influenced countless sci-fi and horror creators, providing a visual vocabulary for the kind of evolutionary horror central to Kosemen's vision.
Gaming the Apocalypse: All Tomorrows Enters the RPG Sphere
The compelling and horrifying universe of All Tomorrows proved to be perfect fodder for tabletop role-playing games. All Flesh Must be Eaten: All Tomorrows Zombies is a supplement for the popular All Flesh Must Be Eaten horror RPG by Eden Studios. This book allows players and Game Masters to bring the myriad post-human species—from the predatory Killers to the parasitic Parasites—into their zombie apocalypse campaigns, creating a unique blend of survival horror and speculative evolution. It's a testament to the world-building power of the original All Tomorrows concept that it can be seamlessly adapted into an interactive, gameable format.
Literary and Cultural Echoes: The Many Meanings of "Tomorrow"
The phrase "All Tomorrows" resonates beyond speculative biology, appearing in various literary and musical contexts that explore themes of future humanity, time, and change. All the Tomorrows After is a work of contemporary fiction and an emotional novel that deals with family and the passage of time, a more intimate take on the future. In the realm of cyberpunk, William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties (Bridge Trilogy Book 3) uses the phrase to title a novel about technological convergence and societal shift in a near-future, dystopian fiction setting.
Perhaps most famously, "All Tomorrow's Parties" is the title of a classic Velvet Underground song. All Tomorrow's Parties: The Velvet Underground Story is a definitive music biography that delves into the band's pivotal role in 1960s Music, rock history, and counterculture. This connection adds a layer of cultural richness to the phrase, linking it to artistic innovation and underground cool.
From the billion-year saga of All Tomorrows to the speculative dinosaurs of All Yesterdays, from the RPG supplements to the art books and literary novels, this network of works showcases the incredible generative power of a single, potent idea. It invites us to look at time, evolution, and humanity itself from unsettling and profoundly creative new angles, proving that the exploration of all our tomorrows—and yesterdays—is a journey with endless horizons.