2026 read #17: The Tomorrow People by Judith Merril.

The Tomorrow People by Judith Merril

192 pages

Published 1960

Read from March 6 to March 10

Rating: 2 out of 5 (generously)

This novel is a weirder beast than first meets the eye. Buried deep inside of it, perhaps, there might even be an interesting story.

After the haunting, poetic prologue segued into dry space-race and Cold War fare, I felt bamboozled. The narration was the 1960 ideal of literary, naturalistic, “Manly Man drinks because he doesn’t know how to process Feelings” fiction, written with a modest amount of flair—enough flair to place it in the higher echelons of midcentury slop, but at the end of the day, I still thought it would be slop. I was pretty sure I would abandon it unfinished.

However, Tomorrow is structured with more ambition than most concurrent sci-fi. In the distant future of the 1970s, two rocketships make it to Mars: one Soviet, one American. The Soviet one disappears, the American one limps back with a solitary survivor, who seems to have blocked out what happened at the very end of things, when his companion disappeared into the Martian night in a rover. The story seems like it will be a psychological mystery, attempting to open the psyche and unravel the memories of Johnny Wendt.

Of course, this is 1960, so the “psychology” angle consists of “The first Americans on Mars feared they might be gay for each other.” (Seventeen years later, Frederik Pohl would steal this concept for Gateway, right down to the psychological analysis to uncover suppressed memories plotline, and sweep the major awards with it.) And of course, this is still a Merril novel, which means the majority of the story is phone calls and social drinking and significant lunches where no one speaks plainly and all the important stuff is beneath the surface, and then more drinking. It seems like 80% of the novel is men almost saying something while drinking. It is rather tedious.

Merril was one of the early movers in what would become sci-fi’s New Wave, which shows up here in nascent form—not just in the rather dull literary verisimilitude, but in the appearance of psionic powers as a plot point. Space amoebas amplifying psychic connections feels like a New Wave bit, too, but I guess that’s spoilers.

Also noteworthy: how openly sexual this book is. I haven’t read much midcentury literary fic, but for 1960 sci-fi, Tomorrow is positively raunchy. In addition to the pathologized queerness, we get mentions of nakedness, prostitution, a couple conceiving out of wedlock, and even an orgasm joke. Also, “bitch” appears a lot. Way too much, in fact.

Much like Merril’s Shadow on the Hearth, Tomorrow is more interesting for its place in the evolution of the genre than it is as a novel one has to read. Unless you really like midcentury scenes of drinking.